
Class. 

■■---■-- J*]tj£> 



Copiglitl?. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSES 



POSSIBILITIES 



/■A 

JAMES GJ'K/McCLURE 













Fleming H. Revell Company 
Chicago New York Toronto 

MDCCCXCVII 






Copyright, 1896, 
By Fleming H. Revell Company. 



To my brother, 

William H. McClure, 

In affection and appreciation. 



Contents. 



PAGE 



1. Finding Our Possibilities 7 

2. Asserting Our Possibilities 23 

3. Protecting Our Possibilities 39 

4. Developing Our Possibilities 54 

5. The Possibility of Being Like Our Heroes . 70 

6. The Possibility of Living Aright Anywhere. 83 

7. The Possibility of Our Time 98 

8. The Possibility of a New and Blessed Life . 113 



Finding Our Possibilities. 

" Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth ?" 

A CTUAL facts are sometimes serious, and report- 
ed facts are sometimes even worse. To be in 
a bad situation is unfortunate ; to be in a bad situa- 
tion that has a bad reputation associated with it is 
even more unfortunate. It was really bad enough 
for Nazareth to be away off in Galilee, where only the 
more ignorant and unpromising of the people lived. 
Nazareth was a little, provincial village. Lines of 
travel had nothing to do with it. It was cut off 
from the enlivening and brightening influences of 
intercourse with the world. To city people and to 
people of culture and fashion it seemed a most out- 
of-the-way spot. No one looked for anything bright 
or startling in Nazareth, that far-away village up 
among the hills! 

Besides, Nazareth had a bad reputation. Places 
get a bad name sometimes, whether justly or un- 
justly it is difficult to say. Nazareth seems to 
have had many rough, uncultivated people in it, 
people who stood ready to throw a person over a 

7 



Possibilities 

precipice if they disliked him. A bad reputation 
for a place is like a stone about a man's neck, it 
helps to drag the place down. Its people are at a 
discount in the market of the world. Then, too, 
they look upon themselves half hopelessly. When 
persons do not expect much of themselves, very 
little good results. A bad reputation hampers and 
hinders the. whole life of a community. 

So it came about that no one expected much of 
Nazareth. Nazareth had done nothing in the world's 
advance and no one thought it ever could do any- 
thing. As we to-day say "Can water run up 
hill?", so people then said " Can there any good 
thing come out of Nazareth ? " The sentiment of 
the time was, that it was a foregone conclusion that 
a good thing could not come out of Nazareth. 

But contrary to all expectation, and contrary to 
all precedent, a good thing did come out of Nazareth. 
A little boy grew up there, a mechanic matured 
there. In a general way his fellow villagers knew 
him favorably. His home circle did indeed wonder 
at him. But no one outside of Nazareth cared any- 
thing for him. Then a day came when, in his full 
manhood, he stepped out into the sight of Palestine. 
He taught, he labored, he lived. And lo, out of 
Nazareth had come so good a thing that the name 

8 



Finding Our Possibilities 

and power of Jesus of Nazareth filled the earth, and 
men were inspired to the loftiest sentiments and to 
the bravest deeds by him, and more, the whole 
world was being redeemed through him. 

That little, rude, provincial village indeed had 
" possibilities " of which no one had ever dreamed. 

We are now to think of the way in which we as 
persons find our possibilities for good. But before 
doing so let us touch on the thought that many 
places, like Nazareth, places that people do not ex- 
pect much from, are capable of great things. 

In Massachusetts is the little town of Andover. 
All about it are bustling cities. In the year 1812 it 
had a mere handful of people and was of no conse- 
quence as compared to great Boston, a few miles 
away. When Andover Seminary was founded, such 
was the antipathy to it that it was doubtful whether 
a charter could be obtained from the Legislature. 
Who in scanning the towns and cities of the United 
States at that time, would have thought that any 
special possibility of influencing the world existed in 
Andover? But in the house of one man, a teacher, 
in that village, were born the ideas and plans 
whereby the first American Foreign Mission Society 
originated, and also the American Monthly Concert 
of Prayer for the world' s conversion, and later the 

9 



Possibilities 

Concert of Prayer for Colleges, the American Tract 
Society and the first organized movement in the 
world founded on the plan of entire abstinence from 
intoxicating drinks. 

Eleven miles back of Albany, New York, there is 
a range of half-mountainous hills called the Helde- 
bergs. Here dwell "the hillers," as the people on 
more level farms contemptuously call those whose 
homes are among the rougher and rockier lands. 
The "hillers" are supposed to be of no account. 
But from those very hill settlements there came a 
man who, for a score of years, sat upon the Supreme 
Court bench of the United States at Washington, and 
had part in some of the most beneficent and far- 
reaching actions that that Supreme Court has ever 
decided. 

There is not a place, wherever it be, that has not 
amazing possibilities of influencing human life. A 
man may dwell in the remotest wilderness, but if he 
is a great thinker, there will be a beaten pathway to 
his door. In this land of America, with its post- 
office facilities and its communication with the pub- 
lic press, every place can get its ideas to the front, 
and if they are worthy ideas can get them into 
recognition. It was from the wilderness that the 
greatest movement of history was heralded by a 

10 



Finding Our Possibilities 

John the Baptist, not from Jerusalem. And to-day- 
many of the great movements for the blessing 
of humanity, like fresh-air projects and seaside and 
mountain homes for needy children, originated in the 
country and forced their way into the city. The 
great Christian Endeavor organization had its start 
in a town unnamed beside the largest centers of pop- 
ulation. The rills that start rivers began far away 
from the haunts of the multitude, and no one knows 
but that out of some remote hamlet which to the 
superficial eye might seem incapable of affecting the 
age shall come a power that shall transform the 
world. 

It is with persons, however, rather than with 
places, that we are to associate this idea of finding 
our possibilities. What a joy it is when any one dis- 
covers his special capabilities and learns that he 
really has a work that he can do ! How dignified 
and significant his life then becomes. 

Again and again the pages of history tell us 
that women have entered palatial homes as nurses, 
and menial as their duties seemed and circumscribed 
as their opportunities for influence appeared, they 
have so moulded the young hearts entrusted to 
their care that when the children grew up, they 
have been benefactors of the human race. Such 

II 



Possibilities 

nurses have often overcome the debilitating and 
worldly atmosphere of the family itself, and made 
the boys strong and spiritual. Later those boys 
have gone into London and Paris to correct evil 
tendencies and stand for a noble type of manhood. 
It was a nurse that thus found her possibilities and 
made Shaftesbury what he was. ' { The history of 
the working classes in this century," said the 
present Prime Minister of England, " is very largely 
the history of one man's life — that of Shaftesbury." 

Over in Scotland there was a gardener who might 
have wondered many times what he had to do for 
the world's good. He was a man who prayed in his 
family. Sir Walter Scott would go, under the cover 
of darkness, to that gardener's house and wait out- 
side the window to listen to the evening prayer that 
asked blessings on him and on the world, and then 
with cheered heart would turn back to his work, that 
brighter words and higher ideas might enter into 
the romances that were to be read in all the earth. 

There was David Livingstone at the age of ten 
working as a " piecer " in a cotton factory near 
Glasgow. What opportunity is there for him? He 
buys a Latin grammar with part of his first week's 
wages. He sits up nights studying till his mother 
sends him to bed, for he must be at work in the 

12 



Finding Our Possibilities 

factory at six in the morning. He places a book 
upon the spinning jenny that he may catch sentences 
as he passes it. He paid his way at the Medical, and 
Greek, and Divinity classes at Glasgow. He passed 
his examinations and became a licentiate of the 
Faculty of Physicians and Surgeons. He was 
ready now for service in China, but war prevented 
his going there. So he puts himself under the 
care of the London Missionary Society to be sent to 
Africa, for the first time in his life being dependent 
upon others. In Africa he built houses, dug canals, 
taught schools, cultivated fields, made explorations 
and helped everybody. When he died, the world 
sorrowed. In all Westminster Abbey there is not 
a more impressive spot than that where the grave 
of Livingstone calls upon all men to heal Africa's 
sores. The poor little boy of the Scotch home did 
indeed find his possibilities. 

It seems as though every kind of life and every 
kind of situation admitted of influence, Granville 
Sharpe was an apprentice to a linen draper in 
London. What can he do? He finds himself un- 
able to talk understandingly about the meaning of 
the New Testament, and he resolves to learn Greek. 
Later he finds the same inability to tell the exact 
meaning of the Old Testament and he learns Hebrew. 

'3 



Possibilities 

He has a brother, a surgeon, who in giving gratui- 
tous relief helps a poor African, Jonathan Strong. 
The negro had been cruelly treated by his master, 
and now lame, almost blind and unable to work, is 
turned adrift to starve. The two brothers help him. 
They cure him. His old master recognizes the 
cured man on the streets, and claims him as 
his slave. Then Granville Sharpe steps forth. 
He resolves that this negro never again 
shall be in cruel bondage. But what can he do ? 
He is poor, unknown, without influence. Besides, 
the position of a slave in England was at the best 
but doubtful. Lord Chief Justice Mansfield believed 
that a slave did not become free by coming into 
England. Every one and everything seemed against 
Granville Sharpe. But he gave all his spare time 
to the study of law for two years, he wrote a tract 
on the "Injustice of Tolerating Slavery in England," 
he kept agitating on the subject, until at last Lord 
Mansfield changed his mind, and there came the 
declaration that the claim of slavery never can be 
supported in England. Then the slave trade, openly 
carried on in the streets of Liverpool and London, 
ceased, and any slave became free the minute his 
feet touched England. Granville Sharpe had found 
his possibilities. 

14 



Finding Our Possibilities 

It is not long ago that Harlan Page was a mer- 
chant in New York City. What could a busy man 
do for the world's good ? What were his possibil- 
ities outside of making money for himself and his 
home ? He saw how many people there were to 
whom no one ever spoke a personal word about their 
Christian purpose. He resolved that he would speak 
to as many as he could, or write to them. He sought 
them in their homes and in their offices, he met 
them on the streets and walked with them, he sent 
them direct and persuasive letters when he could 
not reach them otherwise. It was no easy work. 
It was not always successful. But it did good, great 
good, and scores upon scores of people came forth 
under his influence as avowed and worthy Christians. 
Like him, another, a Sunday school teacher, a busi- 
ness man, too, followed the individual members of 
his classes, praying for them and with them, giving 
them his heart's interest, until he saw over one 
hundred and fifty young men and young women 
place themselves within the ranks of the Church of 
Christ. 

The thought of such possibilities is inspiring. 
How are we to find our own possibilities? First, we 
must believe that we are on the earth for a purpose of 
good. That belief we must never give up as long as 

*5 



Possibilities 

we live. G-od has created each of us for something 
definite and distinct of usefulness. He did not put 
us into being carelessly. He had an end in view, 
which he expected us to meet. We have a particu- 
lar mission. Each of us is a unit, made for a 
special influence. This belief must lie down with 
us at night when we are utterly wearied out, and 
must rise up with us when we, still wearied, have to 
face a day of difficulty. Let people despise us as 
people once despised Nazareth, and say that no good 
thing can come out of our lives, nevertheless we 
must hold fast to our conviction that we are in this 
world for as distinct a purpose as Christ himself 
was in the world. 

And second, this belief must be kept in mind, 
when we hold it. Care must not drive it out. Mer- 
riment must not dissipate it. Whether odium or 
flattery is ours, still we must think about our possi- 
bility There is some good for each to do. That 
good is the main thing of existence. Eyes and 
ears must be open to it. We must watch 
and pray about it. There will be hundreds 
of occasions when it will seem as though there was 
no use of thinking about it, so blocked and un- 
promising will be our situation. But it must be 
kept in mind, a dominating, inspiriting belief. 

16 



Finding Our Possibilities 

Fowell Buxton, once started on his purpose of good, 
would not allow himself to let it out of his thoughts. 
What could such a one as he do ? He was the 
dunce at school. What an idler he was as a boy, 
how awkward. His father was dead. How could 
his mother deal with his violent, domineering, head- 
strong obstinancy ? She never gave up hope. At 
last he got the idea into his head that the work 
Granville Sharpe had begun he must complete, 
that not only must there not be a slave in England, 
but also there must not be a slave in the British 
Colonies. That was a tremendous undertaking. 
Could the dunce succeed ? Without genius, with- 
out intellectual acuteness, but with resolution and 
the growing perception that comes from energy and 
high purpose, he plodded on, and ere he died the cry 
went up from every quarter of the globe where 
England rules, " Slavery is forever over." 

Then, third, we must plod on. When we know 
what God wishes done, we are to do it, on and on and 
on, unceasingly. Endurance is more effective than 
brilliancy. Continued industry is what tells. They 
are the men and women that most bless the world 
who never give up. Dull plodding that does not relax 
will win the day from meteoric enthusiasm. Seem- 
ing failure may be the best means of final success. 

17 



Possibilities 

Paul and Silas exerted a more powerful influence 
when they were in prison, by their happy songs than 
when they were in the streets, by their eloquence. 
Let all the events of earth and all the providences 
of heaven appear to be against us, and we not give 
up, but go right on, plodding away at the good, and 
in due time our possibility will show itself. So 
Arthur Cumnock found at Harvard College. He 
entered that college when the moral standard was 
low. The fast set had marked the college, in the 
eyes of the outside world, for its own. Unclean and 
unmanly things were in the air. " The chief end of 
man was to drink, and gamble politely, and wire 
pull for societies, and cut recitations." High ideals 
of character were all in the shadow. But he lived 
his life, on through the four years, strong, sturdy, 
bound to put the best to the front, in himself and in 
his conversation and in his influence. It was up-hill 
work. The odds were against him. One man try- 
ing to remake a college life ! But when class day 
of his senior year came and the class wished to 
acknowledge the manliest one of them all and pub- 
licly proclaim who it was that had toned up the life 
of the college until purity and good held high place, 
they singled out Arthur Cumnock and shouted his 
name with joy and gave him their united praise. 

18 



Finding Our Possibilities 

More than all and above all we are helped to the 
finding of our possibility by remembering that our 
personality is our power. It was the man Christ Jesus 
that made Capernaum a center of influence; it was 
Himself, more than his teachings and miracles, that 
impressed society. It is always so. Wherever 
great and permanent good has been done it has 
been done very largely through the worth of the in- 
dividual. No man may complain that his place is 
small, his opportunity meagre, when his effective- 
ness will depend almost wholly on what he makes 
his place and his opportunity. Arnold of Rugby 
was not out in the stirring scenes of Parliament. 
Many a one thought his position of teacher in a 
school was paltry. But Arnold was such a man in 
himself that he reached the minds of thousands with 
his strong views and made the name of teacher to 
have new possibilities of influence associated with it 
for all time. 

What cheer and comfort there are in all these 
thoughts about our possibilities. Poor and rich 
alike have them. Michael Faraday is a London 
street boy, living over a stable and loaning news- 
papers for a penny apiece; then an apprentice in a 
book bindery; and then he is one of the most dis- 
tinguished chemists and natural philosophers of his 

19 



Possibilities 

day. Charles N. Crittendon is in business, burdened 
with care, and he goes into the slums, sees their 
wretchedness, and lo ! the man of cares has become 
the man of benevolence, establishing in several cities 
homes of refuge for girls who are lost to God and to 
themselves. A railway president bows his head 
over the family meal and repeats the Lord's Prayer 
as a grace, and hundreds that know of that custom 
try to live better lives. The Christ dies upon the 
cross, and when all others have fallen away and fled, 
the rich Joseph of Arimathea comes forward, and 
now wealth has its possibility to show interest in 
the Master and make provision for his body, 
and nobly does wealth meet its opportunity. 

We never know what possibilities lie in any man 
or in any place. A waiting-maid may outshine the 
richest lady in what she will do for the world's 
good. A slave Joseph may some day save a nation 
from famine. Matthew the despised may become 
Matthew the glorious. Unlearned men have often 
taught the wise. Ian McLaren has shown us a lit- 
tle village, Drumtochty, that no one ever heard of, 
and then has told us how the teacher and the minis- 
ter and the farmer, together, found the most prom- 
ising boys in that village and sent them out educated 
men to be the blessing of mankind. In a hamlet of 

20 



Finding Oar Possibilities 

sixty souls in Texas, men and women are to-day rev- 
olutionizing surrounding society and stamping it 
with godliness. 

Let some one who knows the history of the towns 
of New England, or of New York, or of Pennsyl- 
vania, tell that history. He will point to a house 
here among the hills and say, ' ' There the merchant 
prince of Chicago was born;" to a house there and 
say, ' ' That was the early home of the great editor of 
New York;" to a house beyond and say, " In that 
home grew up the generous philanthropist of Bos- 
ton. " It was in a small school house, plain and un- 
attractive, in the Hampshire Hills, that Wm. Cullen 
Bryant studied. No wonder that the teacher up 
among the miners of Germany touched his hat to 
the noisy boys of his charge, for one of them some 
day would be Martin Luther. There is not a cot- 
tage in any glen, along any roadway, to be despised 
for its possibilities. There is not a town so small 
but that out of it may come a Hampden. There is 
not a school, a store, a shop, but that may have in 
in it now those who shall hereafter enrich and beau- 
tify the earth. 

1 1 Can there any good thing come out of Naza- 
reth ?" There certainly can. What good things 
have come from most unsuspected sources! How 
21 



Possibilities 

sure we may be that every position in which we are 
placed admits of good! 

Let us be brave, then, and hopeful. Human 
nature is grand. We may well believe in it. It 
has magnificent possibilities. Do you recall the 
story of the "Birkenhead " ? It was off the coast of 
Africa. There were four hundred and seventy-two 
men on board, and one hundred and sixty-six women 
and children. The men belonged to several regi- 
ments. They were principally raw recruits lately en- 
tered upon service. It was two o'clock in the morn- 
ing when the vessel struck a rock. All were asleep. 
A hole was stove in the bottom. It was evident 
that the vessel would sink. The women and chil- 
dren were put in the lifeboats and the lifeboats were 
started away. Then the captain shouted to the 
soldiers drawn up in file on deck, "Every man that 
can swim, jump into the water and make for the 
boats." Captain Wright of the 91st Highlanders 
heard these inconsiderate words and shouted, "No! 
No! If you do that, the boats with the women 
must be swamped." The brave men stood motion- 
less. Not a word was said. Not a murmur escaped 
any lip. There they stood, the vessel plunging, and 
with her last lunge they fired a volley, and sank be- 
neath the waves. Yes, there are possibilities in 
human nature. God help us to find our own possi- 
bilities. 

22 



Asserting Our Possibilities. 

"Peter sat at the fire warming himself . " 

'"PHIS experiment is sometimes seen in gun factor- 
ies; a great bar of steel weighing five hundred 
pounds, eight feet in length, is suspended by a very- 
delicate chain. Near by is also suspended a common 
bottle-cork by a silk thread. The desire is to see 
whether the cork can set the steel bar in motion. Such 
an effect seems impossible. Let the cork be swung 
gently against the steel bar and the steel bar re- 
mains motionless. But let it be done again, and 
again, and again, for ten minutes — and lo! at the end 
of that time the bar gives evidence of feeling uncom- 
fortable, a sort of nervous chill runs over it. Ten 
minutes later and the chill has been followed by 
vibrations. At the end of half an hour the great 
bar is swinging like the pendulum of a clock. 

Great possibilities are in that little cork as held 
by the silk thread. The assertion of those possibili- 
ties makes it a power. 

Once there was a man who sat in the courtyard 
of the high priest's house at Jerusalem, warming 

23 



Possibilities 

himseix at the fire. This in itself was a very proper 
thing to do. The night was cold. Only, his Mas- 
ter was in need of friends, and the man was 
warming himself rather than comforting his Master. 
It was simply a case of doing nothing. The Master 
was within sight and within hearing. A friendly 
word about that Master would have given great 
cheer; but it was not spoken. There he sat in quiet- 
ness, having no care, keeping as much in the shadow 
as possible, and he let a noble soul pass through 
trial and distress without so much as lifting a hand, 
an eye, a lip, to help Him. 

But perhaps he was a mute, perhaps he was in- 
capable of a brave deed, perhaps there were no pos- 
sibilities in him of being helpful and heroic. Let 
us see. 

It is a month and a half later. There is a great 
gathering in Jerusalem. Thousands are present. 
They are listening to a man who is talking to them 
earnestly and directly. He is talking about One 
lately crucified at the wish and by the instigation of 
the chief authorities of the city. He speaks right 
out and says that this One is his Master. He goes 
further, and charges these very authorities and 
those who acted under their instigation, with a 
cruel and unjust deed, even this deed of crucifixion. 

24 



Asserting Our Possibilities 

It is an eloquent, brave, even daring man who is 
doing this. What power he has ! How forceful is 
his utterance ! He is afraid of no one. Who can 
he be ? 

Suppose a stranger to the facts of the story should 
ask this quesion, and then someone should answer: 
' ' This is the man who sat at the fire warming him- 
self, and in the supreme hour of his Master's peril 
was speechless." Would not the stranger say: "It 
can not be. " Yes, but it can be. That speechless 
fellow who crouches at the fire is this daring orator. 
Sitting there among the servants of the high priest 
and never lisping one word of loyalty he has in him 
all the possibilities of bravery and speech. These are 
not two men, but one man: one man, first, with pos 
sibilities unasserted, and then, with possibilities 
asserted. As he sits moping over that fire he cuts a 
pitiable figure; he is a poor weakling. But as he 
stands forth at Pentecost he is a hero — a hero who, 
having once dared to assert his possibilities, will go 
on, facing danger and at last death, so that he will 
die with an honored name and will be called forever 
a magnificent man. 

The point I wish now to press is that besides find- 
ing our possibilities we must assert them. Power 
for good is latent in every one. God never has 

25 



Possibilities 

addressed a human being as unqualified for useful 
service. His whole manner of dealing with persons 
is considerate. He never asks a lamb of a man who 
is so poor that he can give only a dove. "It is ac- 
cepted according to that a man hath, and not accord- 
ing to that he hath not." He makes no demands 
other than those that are based on possibilities. And 
the very fact that without an exception or a qualifi- 
cation he calls upon every single one to be useful for 
good in this world indicates, that in his omniscient 
sight every one has the possibility of usefulness for 
the good. Men and women are like seeds. All 
inwrapped within them are possibilities. Small 
things are capable of producing much. One seed 
may grow sixty seeds, one grain of mustard a tree, 
one acorn may help make the ship that carries bless- 
ings across an ocean. 

There is something very charming in this fact. 
Christ never stood before one soul and talked to it 
as though it were incompetent for good. He did 
just the opposite. He said to men who, to the best 
of our knowledge had never anticipated a day's 
work outside of Palestine, "Go into all the world," 
and he charged men who had given no promise 
whatever of useful, not to say large, deeds, to let 
their power out and bless everybody. A man 

26 



Asserting Our Possibilities 

who denies that he can be useful for good in 
life distrusts God, Father and Son, in his heart, and 
contradicts them with his lips. If Moses, who has 
never been eloquent, is told to plead with Pharaoh, 
God, who made his mouth, knows its possibilities of 
speech. If the paralytic is told to take up his bed 
and walk, he has within him the power to do so. 

1 ' Ah, but it doe s not seem possible that my life 
can ever accomplish anything," some one says. 
That is just the beauty of it. It means so much more 
to a man himself when he actually does do some- 
thing of which he once thought himself incapable. 
The satisfaction which comes to a Demosthenes, who 
seemed to have no power of speech at all in his 
stammering days, when he can stand upon the 
bema at Athens and plead with the people to rise 
against the Philip who is invading their nation and 
threatening to make them slaves, and can persuade 
them to assert their manliness and save Greece, is 
most comforting. The man or woman who, seem- 
ingly without gifts, still does good and crowns a life 
with helpfulness, has wondrous cause for gratitude. 
And what an inspiration it is to others to see lit- 
tle men do blessed things. Every human being that I 
have ever met (who was well balanced and sensitive, 
who was not proud and arrogant), has needed en- 

27 



Possibilities 

couragement to believe in his possibilities for use- 
fulness, and encouragement to assert them. In many 
respects most people are retiring. They shrink 
from great responsibilities. Except in matters of 
getting money or public place or social standing or 
literary reputation, they are diffident. It seems as 
though meekness and humility, as though real worth, 
often were associated with distrust of oneself. And 
when men and women, quiet, unobtrusive, un tal- 
ented, prove to be blessings, then other diffident 
people may hope that their lives too will do good. 

The Bible is full of such lives — David, who was a 
mere shepherd lad, not enough of a man to be called 
to do service in the army, only a carrier of provis- 
ions for others who were the real heroes of the hour; 
Esther, who was merely one of many in a king's 
household, belonging to a people under ban, with- 
out an open door of opportunity; Zerubbabel, who 
was so powerless that everybody said he could no 
more do the work which he saw was needed in Jeru- 
salem, than a human hand could topple over a moun- 
tain ; the woman of Samaria, whose whole career of 
evil was an estoppage upon any -effort to bring her 
villagers to any true idea of a holy, blameless life. 
But they succeeded, every one of them ; as did Amos, 
taken from the sheepfolds, and Elisha, taken from 

28 



Asserting Our Possibilities 

the plow, to be prophets; as did those untaught 
fishermen, who became the leaders of the thought 
of the academies of Greece and the universities of 
Europe and the market places of the whole earth. 
From the most unexpected persons the powerful 
agencies of life have been called forth, and in the 
light of the Bible every one has his chance of bet- 
tering the world. 

And in the light of all other^ true books beside 
the Bible, everyone has his chance. Thorwaldsen 
was turning a spit for the cook in a kitchen in Den- 
mark. The cook let him peep through a crack in 
the door at the children met for a party. He over- 
heard the children saying, ' < My father is in high 
office, and no one with a ' sen ' at the end of his 
name can be anything at all. We must put our 
arms akimbo and make the elbows quite pointed, so 
as to keep these ' sen' people at a great distance." 
"And my father is a rich merchant and can give 
away a hundred dollars' worth of bon-bons," said 
another. And ' ' My father is an editor and can 
make people afraid of him," said a third. What 
was there for this little boy whose name ended in 
" sen " and who was penniless ? Only this, his one 
possibility. What was it ? He found it later. It 
was the possibility of being a sculptor. Then he 

29 



Possibilities 

asserted it. And one day those very children grown 
to be men and women came to look at the beautiful 
work that Thorwaldsm had done, and best and most 
beautiful of all was his " Christ." And so the little 
boy put high and great ideas before the eyes of peo- 
ple concerning God and God's works, ideas that 
blessed Denmark and blessed the world. 

No, we must not let this fundamental thought es- 
cape us, that every one who exerts it has his chance 
for usefulness, not for fame perhaps, but for useful- 
ness; not for larger place, but for usefulness. We 
must believe this and believe it with our whole 
soul, believe it as Kitto did when he begged his 
father, deaf boy as he was (he had fallen from a 
ladder when carrying mortar), to take him from the 
poor-house and let him struggle for an education. 
It was a drunken father he appealed to as he said, 
"I know how to stop hunger. Hottentots live a 
long time on nothing but gum. Sometimes when 
hungry they tie a band around their bodies. Let 
me go. I can do as they do. There are black- 
berries and nuts in the hedges, and turnips in the 
fields, and hay-ricks for a bed. Let me go." And 
so one of the greatest Biblical scholars in the world 
began his work, and layman as he was the Univer- 

30 



Asserting Our Possibilities 

sity of Giessen saw such value in his work that it 
named him a Doctor of Divinity. 

But be it noticed that in every case mentioned 
(and hundreds more are waiting to be mentioned) it 
was the assertion of the person's possibilities that de- 
termined the degree of his usefulness. David sought 
bis opportunity. David said, "I will go against 
Goliath." David put forth his skill. In the face of 
Eliab, his brother, who charged him with pride and 
naughtiness of heart, this modest youth took his 
place. Esther sought her opportunity. It was not 
at hand. She, timid, distrustful, knew that life 
itself was in danger. What was her power of 
eloquence in pleading for a cause with a king whose 
high officers had persuaded him to a decree already 
published throughout the kingdom ! But she 
exerted her possibilities, at fearful risk, and she 
too saved a nation, as did David. 

You know already the story of Fowell Buxton, a 
most unpromising lad, a lad of no stability and no 
purpose, becoming the man who labored for the day 
when there should not be a slave in English domain 
and living until he saw that day. The story of 
his life is exhilarating. But how came it about that 
this unpromising youth that was no more to the 
good than Peter warming himself at the fire was to 

31 



Possibilities 

the good, became the man he did? All because of 
a home into which he went as caller and then as 
visitor, whose influence was wholly noble and up- 
lifting. The thought of that home caused him to 
strive at Dublin University for honors. In that 
home was the woman whom he afterward married. 
But beside her there was her sister, a girl of thought- 
fulness, who was merry and bright, could sing and 
dance and play games — and who could do more, who 
could and would think — about matters of human 
welfare, and who thought of slavery and who ex- 
erted gently and persuasively and effectively all her 
powers upon this young man, first a friend and then 
her brother-in-law, to have him to take up the 
cause of the slave. And her power told, and his 
power was aroused, and he labored, and succeeded, 
and when the world applauded the man who asserted 
his possibilities and made England a free land, 
Heaven applauded Priscilla G-urney, who dared to 
exert her possibilities and changed a semi-useless 
ornament of a man into a vigorous worker for the 
world's betterment. 

The possibilities of womanhood for good are great, 
if womanhood would only exert them. Still it is 
true, as it ever has been and ever must be true, 
that to most women home circles will be the first 

32 



Asserting Our Possibilities 

place for such exertion. There are set thrones 
of glory. Ethelberga was wife of Ethelbert when 
the missionaries came to England, heathen England. 
She was a Christian wife. She won his heart for 
herself, and still not for herself but for Christ, and 
when the hour was ripe she exerted all her power 
over that rough heathen king and she saw him 
baptized a Christian. It will be, it is in some 
respects already so, a sorry day for human good 
when the possibilities of women in making hus- 
bands, brothers, sons, visiting men and youth 
noble, unselfish, spiritual are overlooked, are not 
exerted. Stories by the hundred, and all true 
as God's firmest truth can be told, of the possi- 
bilities of influence for good of women, young and 
old, in homes and in all social pleasure. It is a 
fine question, this question of how to assert one's 
possibilities, but assertion does not mean rough, 
unattractive, repellent methods. The sun exerts 
its possibilities when it shines, as the hurricane its 
possibilities when it blows, and exertion is equally 
true of the gentleness of the one as of the bluster of 
the other. Opportunities for such exertion are 
constantly occurring, and oh, the possibility to any 
woman of saying* the wise word, of doing the right 

33 



Possibilities 

deed, that will lodge a thought, perhaps develop a 
purpose in another mind. 

How well I recall the day when as I was making 
a call, conversation gave a young woman the possi- 
bility of saying that she wished I was a Christian! 

Madame de Stsel was anything but beautiful, but 
she knew how to shape the careers of men, as if 
she were omnipotent. Even the Emperor Napoleon 
feared her influence so much that he destroyed her 
writings and banished her from France. 

Is not this the real reason we do not exert our 
possibilities for good, because we are not inspired 
by the good? Here are scores of men that have just 
as much possibility in them as Peter at Pentecost; 
they can talk as well, write as well, live as well as 
he, but to-day they are like Peter at the fire, 
they follow the good but they follow it afar off ; 
they get within the courtyard of the place where 
good is, but they are doing and saying, oh, so little 
for the world's help. They could be up and helping. 
The possibilities are there, but are not exerted. 
They are not in love with the good. 

I have seen men in business who believed them- 
selves capable of making money, exerting their 
possibilities to make money. They go day after 
day to business, they try this method and that, they 

34 



Asserting Our Possibilities 

keep eyes and ears and hands open. They will 
make money if they can. They say, "I have a 
home and family dependent upon me." So they 
exert themselves to the full. Then I have seen peo- 
ple in social life use their every possibility to get 
ahead. They will dress, will call, will entertain, 
will give and accept invitations, and they leave no 
means unused that their every possibility may tell. 
And once again, I have seen people in athletic 
sports who felt that there was that within them 
which admitted of their playing better than they 
were doing, who felt that they had possibilities of a 
better score, and they would play, and practice, 
and play again, that they might make that score 
better. Here is the charm to many a golf player, 
that he may exert his possibilities. 

Oh, that men and women loved to do Christ's 
work in the world as they love other interests. 
What changed Peter, the man looking out for his 
own comfort, into the world's benefactor was a new 
view of Jesus Christ. Hitherto Christ had touched 
the surface of his life, touched it so that he admired 
Christ and in a burst of enthusiasm could say that 
he would stand by Christ to the death. Yes, he did 
love him, in a sort of way. But it was a poor, weak 
way. He was not carried captive, body, mind and 

35 



Possibilities 

soul, by Christ. And so he warmed himself by the 
fire. But later it came to him that the supreme 
work of life was just this work of Jesus Christ; 
that to live for him and get others to live for him, 
and put Christ's life into their homes, into society, 
into the world, was the best thing he could do. 
Then he waked up. Then he opened his lips and 
put forth his powers. 

What we all need is an inspiration. ' ' I, too, can 
be a painter," Raphael said when he saw good paint- 
ing. "I, too, can be good and helpful" all should 
say when they see such a master as Christ summon- 
ing them to devotion to human welfare. Yes, we 
all can be good and helpful, and that not in any 
''average" way either. It is well enough to let 
average intellect and average health and average 
position satisfy us, but never average goodness and 
average helpfulness. Let every possibility for bless- 
ing the world, out. Let the cork keep striking the 
steel bar unceasingly. 

The boy Coley Patteson at Eton was not par- 
ticularly clever, though he studied well and was 
captain of the boats and was in the cricket eleven. 
There were bad customs at Eton, as there often are 
in the best educational institutions. At certain 
gatherings coarse songs were sung, songs unbecom- 

36 



Asserting' Our Possibilities 

ing high-minded boys. They had been sung for 
years. They were a part of the traditions of the 
school. But Coley Patteson quietly declared that 
they should not be sung in his presence, and when 
one was sung he dared to get up and leave the room. 
Then and there the custom stopped. For the boy 
asserted his possibilities, and he carried the day. 
And what a preparation that youth-time experience 
was for the dangers when, as Bishop Coleridge Pat- 
teson, he faced the Melanesians with their clubs and 
arrows, and daily risked his life to save them ! 

My heart burns with desire that all the unex- 
erted possibilities of manhood for good may be ex- 
erted. There have been plants upon which a stone 
has fallen or been placed, so that it would seem as 
though the plants could not grow, and they have 
come forth from beneath the stone, and have grown 
out and around it, and they would not let the stone 
crush them or keep them down. There are men in 
business, in sports, in pleasures, who can not be 
kept down, because they will exert themselves. So 
may it be with us in our possibilities for good. 

For I charge you to remember that so long as 
Peter did not exert himself for Christ he was in 
danger. He was growing weaker in courage. De- 

37 



Possibilities 

lay in exerting his possibilities caused him to deny 
his Lord, and to deny him meanly. 

The man that does not exert his possibilities for 
Christ is in danger of sinking lower, of growing 
weaker all the time. Our own safety and the 
world's good depend on the assertion of our possi- 
bilities. 



38 



Protecting Our Possibilities. 

" And his strength went from him." 

/^"\NE of the questions often asked children about 
the Bible is, "Who was the strongest man?" 
The answer is almost always ready, "Samson." 

It is interesting to see how eagerly the story of 
Samson is heard and how easily it is kept in mind. 
That Moses was the meekest and Solomon the wisest 
man may be forgotten, but that Samson was the 
strongest man is remembered. 

It is said that everybody loves a hero. The kind 
of hero that most people can understand quickest is 
a physical hero. All that they have to do is to look 
at him and see his deeds and then they know about 
him. A spiritual hero, one who does his strong 
things in his heart where motives and purposes are 
the battle ground, is not so easily comprehended. 

So children and untaught people and in fact the 
great generality of mankind have their attention 
caught by a physical hero. We love to hear about 
him. One like Samson is a fascinating subject to 
most of us. 

39 



Possibilities 

We know nothing of Samson's size, whether he 
was tall or short. All we know is that he was 
strong. What power he had! His hands and wrists 
were so strong that he could take an ordinary 
bleached bone of some ass that had died in the fields, 
and he could wield it so that a thousand men were 
struck down by it. His arms were so strong that 
he could tear apart new ropes which had never been 
used until they were bound around him. And his 
back and shoulders and legs were so strong that he 
could lift great timbers and carry them even up to 
the very top of a hill. 

To see him when at rest was to wonder where his 
strength lay. He certainly had strength, It would 
not do to trifle with him. He had possibilities 
stored away within him, and woe to the man that 
called them forth. Nobody could resist him. He was 
like an Alpine avalanche bursting on a peasant's hut 
and crushing it as though it were an eggshell, when 
his possibilities expressed themselves. 

Yes, Samson was the strongest man, and he did 
stupendous deeds. No one in all the catalogue of 
Bible characters was so strong in body as he. 
But what became of all these possibilities, what was 
the outcome of his wondrous powers? 

He did not protect them. For a time he did. There 

40 



Protecting Our Possibilities 

were years when no one could persuade him to relax 
his care of them. No miser ever hoarded his gold 
more carefully than Samson his possibilities. Neither 
threats of men nor wiles of women could put him off 
his guard. Like John Knox, who would not be 
moved from the path of integrity even by the tears 
of a queen, he would not be moved by enticements 
and entreaties and the plaints of love to surrender 
his possibilities. 

But there came an hour when he lost his sense of 
danger, when the voice of pleading found its way 
past all the sentinels of discretion to his passion, 
and he let an influence prevail with him which 
robbed him of his possibilities, and lo, the strong 
man is strong no more. Any one of hundreds of 
men are stronger than he now. He is powei'less to 
resist his foes as they seize him, bore out his eyes, 
lead him like a slave, put fetters of brass upon him, 
and make hirn do a woman's work of grinding meal, 
in the prison house. 

Surely there is something startling in the fact 
that the strongest man in all Biblical history 
becomes a weakling. What can it mean? 

It is not enough to have possibilities, not enough 
to exert them upon many occasions; they must be 
protected. 

41 



Possibilities 

I recall that when the war of 1861 broke out and 
men were enlisting and starting for the front, com- 
panies would pass along the streets of a city, on the 
way to the railway station or steamboat whaif. 
As the people, in the crowd that lined the strt ets, 
saw one and another among the recruits whom they 
knew, they would shout out to them, ' ' Take care of 
yourself," "Take care of yourself." It is a com- 
mon expression, used so often that its meaning is 
almost forgotten, but it was just the word to say to 
those soldiers. They were going out into peril, 
the peril of bad associations, the peril of new 
temptations, the peril of disease and the peril 
of battle. "Take care of yourself." Yes, they 
needed just that word. They had health and 
strength then, they were pure and manly then, but 
how would it be in the new dangers ? The thou- 
sands of instances of men who gave up all their 
virtue and lost their manliness and stood powerless 
for good among their fellows before the war was 
over, tell us that that charge was not an idle one. 

One of the most difficult things for mankind to 
realize is that this world always stands ready to 
strip us of our possibilities for good. Here is a 
young man leaving home to make his way in the 
world. He is pure as the light, he is consecrated 
42 



Protecting Our Possibilities 

to the good, he has all the power within him that 
comes from large ideals. In his home, in his church, 
in his surroundings he is a blessing, and accordingly- 
much is expected of him, for his possibilities are 
known. Here is a home which stands for all Chris- 
tian earnestness. No one can come within it for a 
visit without feeling its godliness. How careful it 
is about family worship, about the special features 
of Sunday, about devotion to church duties and help- 
ful work. Here is a man whose voice and deeds 
have told for the good for years. People listen to 
him with respect. People quote his deeds with 
quiet approbation. He has proved himself a great 
inspiration to the world's advance. 

But will these men and homes remain always as 
they are? Because they have started well, will they 
continue well? Everyone knows how young men 
have left their simplicity, have grown lax in their 
conduct, have drawn away from activity and have 
become pleasure-seekers and money-getters, and 
their possibility was lost. And homes, we have seen 
them change as completely as Samson was changed. 
Instead of being strong for good they have become 
weak for good. Household religion is neither their 
aim nor their inspiration. Conversation centers on 
people rather than principles, upon the evanescent 

43 



Possibilities 

rather than the abiding. The Sabbath has calling 
and eating and light reading and earthly conversa- 
tion. And the home never inspires anyone now to 
serious thought. No stranger coming into it will 
be helped to offer his life to a distant but needy 
mission field. No child will grow up in it to think 
that he must lay down his life for the good of the 
world. And the man! Let him grind corn and do 
all sorts of every day ordinary things, for his voice 
is not wanted nor his influence asked when men are 
trying to lift their fellows to high levels of disinter- 
ested zeal and beautiful holiness. 

It is reported that one of the firm of Baring 
Brothers once called on Stephen Girard, who was 
working in his hay-loft, and said: "I came to inform 
you that your ship, the 'Voltaire,' has arrived 
safely." " I knew that she would reach port safely, ' 
replied Mr. Girard ; ' ' my ships always arrive safe. 
She is a good ship." But ships, good ships, whom- 
soever they may belong to, do not always reach port 
safely. The best ships, manned by the best crews, 
officered by the best officers, have never reached 
port. Something has occurred. Some factor not 
considered has come forward and there has been dis- 
aster. The "Ville du Havre" had a magnificent 
record, but there was an error in the calculation of 

44 



Protecting Our Possibilities 

a distance, and she was struck, and went down. 
This very spring a steamer, the < ' Drummond Cas- 
tle," with two hundred and fifty-three souls on 
board, struck on some rocks off the coast of France, 
and all perished excepting two sailors and one pas- 
senger; and the theory of the wreck is this: That 
there are currents along that coast which run so 
quietly and so strong that that vessel was carried 
twenty-five miles out of her course before she knew 
those currents had affected her. 

Up in the waters of Alaska I saw the largest 
steamship that sails those waters turned right about 
by one of the many currents that play so gently but 
so powerfully around the multitudinous islands. No 
one was aware of the influence of these currents un- 
til they had done their work. The drifts of life, the 
influences that take a life out of its course, a home 
out of its purpose, like silent, unsuspected currents, 
are the cause of many a ruined possibility. No, 
every good ship does not reach port in safety. 

There is something very suggestive in the way in 
which Samson lost his possibility. I mention but 
three features of it. One was, the oft repeated in- 
fluence of a companion who had not his welfare at 
heart. This influence gradually bore in upon him 
until he gave way to a seemingly harmless weakness. 

45 



Possibilities 

Delilah kept at him. At first she accomplished noth- 
ing. He was strong in his resolution. It might 
have seemed as though she would be chagrined by 
repeated failures, and leave him alone. But no, 
again and again she brought her persuasiveness to 
bear upon him, and at last the man that had not 
given a sign of weakening all at once surrendered 
and let her know the secrets of his heart. 

He is not the only one~who thus has been led on 
to sorrow. The constant beating of the raindrops 
has often worn a hole into a stone, and the constant 
hearing of low views of honesty, of virtue, of spirit- 
uality, has taken away many a man's vigor. I have 
known cases where the oft-repeated criticism of the 
good has at last made the good almost ashamed to 
show itself. I have seen husbands and wives persuade 
one another into that which meant the despiritualiz- 
ing of their household lives. I have seen children 
wear away their parents' robustness by their con- 
tinued claim for something different. 

There is a terrible danger in letting one's self be 
exposed to the same deteriorating influence again 
and again. Scarce any man, unless he is firmly on 
his guard, can stand it. No matter how strong 
men may be, they are unconsciously at last affected 
by it. T knew a man who stood behind his bar and 

4 6 



Protecting Our Possibilities 

never touched a drop of liquor. Until he was seven- 
ty years old he would not drink either alone or with 
another, however winsome the invitation, and then 
when he was past seventy he yielded to the very 
atmosphere of his surroundings and died a drunk- 
ard. There are some temptations which a man can 
not recklessly resist forever. If G-od provides a 
way of escape and he does not avail himself of it, 
those temptations will surely overpower him. To 
keep in their presence is to tempt providence. John 
B. Gough must not breathe the air of a saloon if he 
can help it, and he can help it by crossing the street 
and walking on the other side as far away as possi- 
ble from the saloon. What may be called the quiet 
seductions of evil are terrible. Through them the 
lotus eaters lost their valor. 

But what next confronts us in Samson's case as 
most palpable, was his sleeping in the presence of 
danger. There never has been a man so strong that 
he could afford to do this. A mighty past is no 
provision for a sure future. Vigilance is the un- 
ceasing requisite for safety. To be off one's guard 
is always to be in peril. 

We should not be angered because peril is thus 
everywhere. There is great good in peril. It 
keeps us awake. It makes us alert. Once let re- 

47 



Possibilities 

laxation enter a camp of soldiers and discipline 
goes. A condition of danger made Hannibal's 
soldiers attentive and strong. When they came to 
Capua and had naught to do but think of danger as 
far away, they let the sleep of inactivity and weak- 
ness creep over them. 

Nor should we be angered because deterioration 
ensues as certainly as our possibilities are not 
guarded. It is true that flowers are ready to fade 
and fruits to decay; that fires unprotected go out, 
and all good things left to themselves grow weak. 
" If I neglect my practice a day, I see the difference 
in my execution; if for two days, my friends see it; 
and if for a week, all the world knows my failure." 
So wrote the singer Malibran, and the experience of 
all mankind bears testimony to the fact that even 
virtues must be kept in practice else they suffer. 

What wondrous possibilities have been lost simply 
because their possessors were careless. Esau had 
health and strength, was a lover of all out-of-door 
sports, was in the line of inheriting one of the 
largest fortunes and one of the happiest blessings 
mentioned among mankind. But what availed him 
those possibilities, when he forgot to take care of 
them, and without any seeming realization of the 
significance of his deed, let them all go and lost 

48 



Protecting Our Possibilities 

them, that he might indulge a temporarily urgent 
physical appetite. David, too, stood among men 
endowed as no other man of his day. What a mind 
he had, what a reputation he had earned, what 
power he had won ! How he could write, and sing, 
and play ! How many his soldiers, and how devoted 
his followers ! Yes, but this man that had made so 
much of himself, that had developed from the un- 
known shepherd lad into the king whose praise was 
upon a thousand lips, let one hour of forgetfulness 
lay hold of his vigilance and lo, David's name is in 
the dust, and the mighty man is a poor, helpless, 
disgraced sinner. 

Was there ever such an opportunity as was Solo- 
mon's ! Treasures of every kind were his when he 
began to live. Those treasures increased as he used 
them, until before him was none like him and after 
him was none to compare with him. Whatsoever he 
put his hand and heart to opened like a great pal- 
ace to him and invited him to enter and enjoy its 
riches. And he did enter, and he laid hold of all 
the wealth the whole world could offer. And then 
what? Like Samson, he slept. He let all conscious- 
ness of danger pass from him, and his very possi- 
bilities lay prostrate, as when a superb temple be- 

49 



Possibilities 

comes a mass of ruins, walls fallen and debris every- 
where. 

The better a thing is the more it needs guarding. 
If Satan knows of a man with possibilities like Job's, 
surely he will keep his eye on Job and do the best 
he can to strip him of those possibilities. 

But the most startling feature of Samson's loss 
was, his unconsciousness of it. His strength had 
all gone from him before he knew he had lost a 
particle of it. He was all unaware of his deteriora- 
tion. There he slept, as sweetly as ever he slept 
when his power was still magnificent. When he 
opened his eyes and looked about him, life seemed 
just the same as when of old he made masterful 
fights. Why should he not do the same now? So 
he shakes himself as of yore. But it is in vain, all 
in vain. His strength is gone. He has wakened 
too late. 

That was a most suggestive statement that Hosea 
once used concerning the kingdom of Israel, in de- 
scribing its weakness: "Grey hairs are here and 
there upon him, yet he knoweth not." One by one 
they had come without Israel's realizing their com- 
ing. And little by little strength had been under- 
mined without Israel's being aware of the fact. 
Such unconsciousness of one's true condition is pos- 

50 



Protecting Our Possibilities 

sible and is terrible. At last a moment of emer- 
gency creeps upon the person and there is no force 
with which he can meet the emergency. He calls 
to his servants to help him and they have all fled 
and not one is left to answer to his wish. The man 
is deserted in his hour of need and in his desertion 
is powerless. 

Unconscious deterioration ! It has captured its 
thousands. They have begun well, but somehow 
they became bewitched and they left their first love 
and their first earnestness. But it need never 
be. Our possibilities can be protected and pre- 
served. There is such a thing as u the continuity 
of goodness." Timothy had it. He was always 
godly. He never lost his possibilities, nor did 
Paul ever lose his possibilities. He kept all he had, 
until the very end. So, too, St. Louis of France. 
He mingled in the courts of kings. He went among 
the busy, traveling crusaders. But wherever he 
went, he lived worthily of that mother who said, 
1 ' I would rather see him dead at my feet than have 
him commit a mortal sin." 

We can not recover the irreparable past. There 
are things which once done never can be undone. 
There are influences started in other days that have 
gone beyond all our reach and control. This fact 

5i 



Possibilities 

we have to face. But while facing it we still have 
hope for the future. We can reassert ourselves. 
We can recover our vigor, we can turn again to 
God and strengthen ourselves. We can bid farewell 
to every Delilah that has robbed us of our vitality. 
We can shun sweet allurements. We can find again 
the place of private prayer, we can restore the 
broken altar" of our homes, we can lay hold again 
upon our old ideals and we can be like the Nazarite, 
consecrated unto God and unto God alone. 

More carefully than a mother ever guarded her 
child, more carefully than a sentinel when he knew 
an attack was impending ever protected a garrison, 
should we protect the wondrous possibilities with 
which God has endowed us. He has a work for 
every one of us as truly as he had a work for 
Samson. Sweet dalliance with evil was Samson's 
ruin. Ah, if Samson had only kept aloof from 
insinuating influences and had not drifted ! If he 
had only realized that God wished him to be His 
own helpful servant, an enemy of his enemies, and a 
friend of his friends ! 

Well for us will it be if we cling tenaciously to the 
highest ideals that come to us in the most exalted 
moments of life, and guard our possibilities with 
unceasing appreciation of their preciousness. See 

52 



Protecting Our Possibilities 

to it, every one, that a voice is constantly heard call- 
ing the charge from Heaven itself into your heart of 
hearts, ' ' Keep, keep the good thing I have entrusted 
to thy care. " 



53 



A 



Developing Our Possibilities. 

" Let your light shine.*' 

NY one who knows the facts can take a candle 
and say so much that is interesting and in- 
structive about it that child and man alike will be 
entertained. 

Mr. Spurgeon told his students for the ministry 
that every one of them ought to find illustrations 
enough in a tallow candle for a sermon. Some one 
expressed doubt as to the possibility of so doing, 
whereupon Mr. Spurgeon wrote a whole lecture 
about candles and the way they illustrate truth. 

Nineteen hundred years ago the lights people 
depended upon were few and, as we would say to- 
day, feeble. There was the light of the kindled 
fire, and it was often used to show people a path 
both on land and on water. The great lighthouse, 
the Pharos, that was one of the seven wonders of 
the world, at the mouth of the harbor of Alex- 
andria, kept a fire burning at night, and that fire 
threw beams forty miles out into the ocean. Then 
there were the lamps, little bronze vessels, in which 

54 



Developing Our Possibilities 

oil was placed, and the wick, when ignited, gave 
light. The light was small and a great many 
such lamps would not make a building bright. 
Also, there was the torch, any piece of com- 
bustible material, one end of which might be 
lighted, while the other end was held in the hand 
or fastened to a secure place. Besides these, there 
was the candle. Nobody knows when it came into 
use. But it is a very old friend to the human race 
and has had part in the household life of mankind 
for many hundreds of years. 

All these lights were very useful in their day and 
place, and are useful still. No one feels like laugh- 
ing at them nor disregarding them. Light is so 
valuable, so necessary, that from the outset of the 
history of our earth people have been accustomed to 
associate it with Deity. The Greeks used to say 
that Prometheus brought fire, artificial light, down 
from heaven, and that all the gods of the upper 
world were angered at him because he had taken 
from them and conferred on man one of their chief, 
their distinctive treasures. Light came to be the 
symbol of Deity, and so men bowed down before the 
sun, moon and stars because they were givers of 
light. They built altars and kept alive fires on them 
in order to show reverence for the gods from whom 

55 



Possibilities 

light sprang, and they put lamps and candles in 
their temples as symbolical of their gods. 

It is very easy to see how lamps and candles got 
into Christian churches. They were already asso- 
ciated with worship when Christ came. And then 
he spoke of himself as "Light," and James spoke of 
God as " the Father of lights." And besides, Christ 
called Christian people " lights " and likened them 
to candles. And once again, many of the early meet- 
ings of Christians were held in secret places, under 
cover of night, where all was darkness, excepting as 
a few well placed candles showed the preacher and 
made clear the ways of exit. 

The candle is really a very interesting object, 
merely in its historical association with Christianity. 
How many times preachers have pointed to it and 
likened it to Christ ! How many times people have 
used it to find their path as they threaded one of 
the unlighted towns of Palestine, or picked their 
road in the deserted quarries of Rome to the Christ- 
ians' gathering place, or walked in the laby- 
rinth of the catacombs to a burial of a martyr, 
forty feet below the pavement on which the multi- 
tude who had seen the lion kill the Christian were 
carousing after the show was done. 

But it is this feature of the candle that is to be 

56 



Developing Our Possibilities 

in our minds just now, the feature of the effort that 
men have been making for many, many years to in- 
crease the power of its light. Here, they said, is a 
candle. It gives a certain amount of light and t hat 
amount is good. Can we increase that light? Can 
we get a light that will be equal to two candles? 
Can we, even if we do not bring twenty candles to- 
gether into a room, get a light that will be equal to 
twenty candles? "What are the possibilities of arti- 
ficial lighting that may be developed? 

That was a great question. It is always a great 
question when a man says of any particular thing, 
can this be made more? When James Watt sat 
down before the fire-place and seeing the lid of the 
kettle rise and fall, and recognizing that the steam 
from the heated water had power to lift the lid, 
wondered whether steam could do more than lift a 
few ounces, and how, he had started the whole de- 
velopment of the steam engine and of what has 
grown from it. When cotton planters in the south 
came to the northern school-teacher who had just 
begun to teach their children, and asked Eli 
Whitney if there was not some way of saving ex- 
pense in the picking of cotton so that the time lost 
in separating the seed from the fibre could be saved, 
and Eli Whitney began to develop the idea t of the 

57 



Possibilities 

cotton-gin, then there was the commencement of a 
new period of prosperity for all who raised cotton. 
The man who says, ' l My field raises ten bushels of 
wheat, can I make it yield twenty?" is the man who 
has the idea within him which leads to successful 
farming. 

There are many things that are capable of develop- 
ment. It seems as though nothing ever came to 
our hand at its best. Everything allows of effort, 
if the most is to be made of it of which it is capable. 
Here is the wild grape. A few good uses can be 
made of it. It may be dried perhaps, it may be 
pressed and a wine made of it, it may be eaten out 
of hand when fully ripened. Birds will seek it, 
bears too, and Indians. But suppose we take it and 
develop it, and lead it on, little by little. Then 
some day what shall we have? Think of the grap- 
eries of the Old World and the New, of the 
raisins made from great Muscatels, of the wines 
pressed from beautiful Moselle for the invalid, of 
the clusters of the Hamburgs grown in the Queen's 
gardens at Windsor. The little has indeed become 
the much. 

Nor is the grape an exception. Here is a wee 
apple of the woods; and then match it with what it 
may become in the Pippin or Spy. Here is a beach 

58 



Developing Our Possibilities 

plum, little and bitter; and behold, here is the 
magnificent specimen from California's largest 
ranch. 

It is the same with flowers. See the rose of few, 
weak petals by the road-side, and then see an 
American Beauty. The same with vegetables; and 
the little love apple, no larger than a good sized 
bullet, has become the tomato that covers a break- 
fast plate. 

All the voices of nature seem to be crying, < ' Here 
I am, what can you make of me?" And the appeal 
constantly is, as we look at every object, from the 
sap in the maple tree to the rough iron rocks of the 
mountains, to take hold of the object and develop 
its possibilities. 

What a lesson comes to us from the development 
of the candle. No one may ever laugh at the candle. 
It has done a blessed work since the beginning of its 
career. When men were discussing great themes 
in the legislative council of 1780 at Hartford and 
the eclipse of the sun came on and the question was, 
whether the day of judgment had arrived, it was 
Col. Davenport who said, "Let us be found doing 
our duty, if this be the day of judgment. So let 
the candles be brought." 

But how small and weak the candle seems before 

59 



Possibilities 

some great search-light! How many times greater 
than the power of one candle the search-light is! 
Here are lights one hundred, one thousand, ten 
thousand candle power. And now the arc light is 
having its day, and other new methods of producing 
strong light are being pondered, with every pros- 
pect of success, and more and more and more man 
is making light to shine. 

I think it a rightful use of Christ's words to say, 
that scarce any man knows the possibilities that are 
in him until he develops them. "Let them out, 
Let them out," is his message to all. Who knows 
what may be, if you only keep making the most of 
what you have and are? In many respects it was a 
very crude set of men whom Christ called " lights." 
The wits of Greece had never heard of them, nor the 
scholars of Egypt, nor the nobles of Rome. They 
were nobodies in their own nationality. But they 
had a few ideas of good and purity and helpfulness 
that no one else had as they had them. And these 
were worthy ideas, blessed ideas. Now let them 
make these ideas shi?ie, even as a candle lets out its 
light. And they did; untaught men, unrecognized 
men as they were. They made it their work to 
shine. Men marveled at them, unlearned ones, who 
became what they became, even as we marvel at the 
60 



Developing Our Possibilities 

search-light beside the candle. They were afraid 
of no one. They spoke earnestly and tellingly. 
They had the power of ten thousand men of their 
former selves. 

What a loss it would have been to our world if 
people of possibility had not developed their possi- 
bility ! Here was the Lord Christ himself, spotless 
in his integrity. Never, in all the history of man- 
kind, was there one of whom it might be said, "He 
is Light," more truly than of him. At thirty 
years of age he was a perfect man. All the 
beauty, all the whiteness that we associate with 
the idea of light were in Christ. His heart was 
warm and pure like light itself, and so was his ex- 
ample. But if he had then hidden away in some 
mountain retreat or some desert cave or some city 
alley and had never shined forth upon men and 
upon the world, how unspeakably great the loss to 
us, and how absolutely impossible for him to save 
the race. The mission of a light is not to hide it- 
self away under a bushel or anything else, but to 
shine. Christ duplicated his power millions upon 
millions of times by living out his views, telling 
out his views, making to-day's advance help on to- 
morrow's advance. It was his way when here; it 
is his way now. He is bound to be more and 

61 



Possibilities 

more effective, and let his light be stronger and go 
farther and pierce deeper. "I shine" is his mot- 
to, not "I hide." 

I hold that it would have been a fearful crime 
against humanity had this not been true. If Jesus 
Christ knew what he did of God and of God's wish 
for humanity, if he had within him light upon life 
which others did not have, so that they walked in 
darkness, and he did not shine, let out that light 
so that all in the house of earth might see the 
truth and be helped thereby, he would have done 
a wrong for which God could not forgive him. It 
would have been a dastardly thing for Christ's 
twelve, who had views of life that were inspira- 
tion and comfort and courage, to withhold them 
from a needy and heavy hearted world. It never 
will do, it never has done for a human being to 
say, * ' I am a good man and that is enough. " It is 
not enough. What was written of John the Bap- 
tist was, first, that he was a "burning light." 
That is good in itself and so far as it goes. ' < A 
burning light." But it was added " And a shining 
light," a light that gave its message, that let out 
all its possibilities, rebuking wrong, steadying 
weakness, setting straight the crooked and point- 
ing, with ever increasing earnestness, to the good. 

62 



Developing Our Possibilities 

The trouble with the great bulk of mankind is 
that they do not shine. They do not take what is 
inherent in them and let it out. Good ideas get no 
expression; high aspirations stop with the individ- 
ual. The amount of good in men's minds sometimes 
when they leave a church service is enough, if it 
should shine forth, to illumine the whole world. But 
though they are burning they will not suffer them- 
selves to be shining, lights. They say, " My relig- 
ion is not to be paraded, my goodness not to be pro- 
claimed from the housetops. " Yes, it is. Whoever 
taught the other idea is a helper of Satan. You a 
light to be put under a bushel or under a bed! Not 
a bit of it. You are to get the most prominent 
place you can find, a candlestick, and shine and give 
your light. 

It is a very interesting process which goes on 
when an eastern peasant takes his candle and puts it 
under a bushel or a bed. His bushel, so called, is 
less than one of our peck measures, and the candle, if 
of any respectable length, is very apt to be put out 
in getting under the bushel; and his bed is the rug 
laid upon the floor, and when a candle is placed be- 
neath it, with no air and with a heavy rug above it, 
it becomes extinguished. Possibilities go unless 
they are developed. The grape runs back to the 

63 



Possibilities 

wild seedling if not cared for. The best of all pos- 
sible apple trees will deteriorate if not protected. 
Disuse is abuse, and abuse is injury, and the more 
tender and the more delicate the thing injured the 
sooner its vitality ceases and it loses its power. 

I claim that just as light shines to give light to 
others, every human being must shine out all the 
the good that is in him for the world's help. Good- 
ness is not immaculate selfishness; goodness is love, 
goodness is unselfishness. 

Immaculate selfishness pays a fearful penalty. It 
quenches the light itself. A light cannot continue 
to be a burning light unless it is a shining light. 
Good dies out of that man who does not use his 
good for the world's help. 

But if he uses it, and keeps using it, and tries 
to have it shine more and more, so long as life lasts, 
what comes of it? You and I have seen men and 
women who seemed without promise, just letting 
what they had exert its power for the good of the 
world, keeping shining whether people laughed or 
condemned, keeping shining in all sorts of weather 
and under all sorts of discouragement, and we 
have seen them, ere they died, so effective in what 
they actually accomplished for good that the candle 
had become an arc light. Lady Huntington, going 

6 4 



Developing Our Possibilities 

to a ball and thinking ' 'Is this the best way to spend 
my time? " and determining to use her time and 
strength and power to the greatest advantage and 
becoming, instead of a social queen and a recipient 
of attention, the mighty helper of Christ and the 
mighty benefactor of others, is a case in point. So 
is any man who, like Mr. Moody, once was power- 
less in the world's influence and now is a force in 
that influence. 

These are not rare instances. When the Bible 
says, "Not many wise, not many mighty, not many 
noble are called," it says a truth we all can recog- 
nize if we think back to the beginning of those who 
to-day are the greatest blessing to the human race. 
The men and women to-day, that in the realm of 
human helpfulness seem mighty, wise and noble 
have grown to be such. They were not such orig- 
inally. They let the light shine and so they became 
what they are. 

We live in an age which is thoughtful about de- 
veloping possibilities. Here is electricity. What 
have we not already done with it. Men knew about 
lightning long before Franklin's day. How much 
Franklin developed from lightning ! But what has 
been developed since, the telegraph and the tele- 
phone, the application to lighting and transporta- 

65 



Possibilities 

tion! Is the end yet ? No one believes that it is. 
Men are saying, ' ' We will try to find something- 
more. " So, too, what have we not done with air, 
even common air, compressing it, utilizing it until 
it forces up weights and pulls down buildings and 
resists blows, and no one knows what may still come 
from it if its possibilities are only developed. 

I long for men and women who in the realm of 
helpfulness, will make their life study the study of 
development in power to bless. Already there is 
lodged in everyone of you enough power to make 
you a great help to the world. You have light. 
You have thoughts, views, aspirations; you know 
what is good in life. Oh, if you would only let the 
light shine. 

" I am only like a pine knot, so far as my life is 
concerned," says one. Ah, but a pine knot kindled 
a light once by means of which a poor boy learned 
to read in the evening hours and then he went out 
from his little cottage to stand before thousands 
and thousands to speak to them words of comfort. 
And how often, again and again, a simple lamp 
placed within the window of a home has guided 
wandering footsteps back to the doorway of safety 
and peace. And how some small taper has been 

66 



Developing Our Possibilities 

the means of kindling the light whereby a sailor has 
found his way through storm and darkness. 

There are many, many things concerning which 
we may be in doubt, but concerning one, never. 
That is, that the power of any one's life is small. 
No living being knows what it is and what it may 
become. 

To-day, and with us all, there is opportunity for 
increasing what might be called "the natural 
power " of our lives. Take the simplest light and 
see how strong it becomes when a reflector is put 
behind it. Take a lighthouse and see one lamp sur- 
rounded by lenses of various sizes and shapes, all 
meant to so converge and so direct and so send forth 
the light of that lamp that it shall shine miles away 
and shall be bright and helpful for navigation even 
then. 

There are a hundred ways by which we duplicate, 
triplicate the power of our own light. We put a 
good book into another's hands, we bring another 
to a helpful Christian service, we connect ourselves 
with some institution that blesses the world, and so 
we increase our own power immensely. Our one 
candle light becomes, by the use of these lenses, 
twenty, one hundred candle light. 

Is it not inspiriting to have Christ call us "light" 

6 7 



Possibilities 

and bid us shine! What possibilities he suggests. 
Men in awful peril perhaps will see our light and be 
guided thereby to safety. 

Inspiriting did I say? Yes, and arousing too. 
For what if the light does not shine! Then, alas, 
wanderers dying in the darkness, and sailors 
wrecked, and homes made desolate. 

Out into the darkness it is ours to shine. Noise 
has naught to do with shining, nor has commotion, 
but power has. How light penetrates darkness! 
how it finds a way into darkness! how it 
makes itself seen! No one can tell another the 
exact things he should do in life, but this he 
can tell, that every one should shine, should let out 
the good, should give it to the world, should try to 
be a help and a blessing. 

What I am pleading for is indeed a sense of the 
worthiness of our own lives, of their value, of their 
possibility. But I am pleading for more, for such a 
determination to take the possibility, and use 
it, and develop it, that it shall shine more and 
more. Be a better man to-day than yesterday, 
and so make the way clear to be a better man 
to-morrow than to-day. In yourself be a larger 
light to-day than yesterday, and by means of 
those things which you can place about you, as 

68 



Developing Our Possibilities 

the lenses about the lamp, be more of a light to- 
day than yesterday. Never stop growing in good- 
ness, nor in purposes to help the world. 

Herein is my wish, that on this day you consecrate 
yourself to a purpose unfaltering as was that of 
Christ, that more and more you will try to use your 
powers for the good, and that you will ask that you 
may shine clearer, farther, deeper into the darkness 
of this world's needs. 



6 9 



The Possibility of Being Like Our 
Heroes. 

" We all beholding are changed into his image." 

TPHIS story is told. Two young women lived in the 
same home. They were cousins. One slept in 
a room where she could look at the picture of Marie 
Antoinette. In the very next room slept the other 
cousin, and at the foot of her bed, made by the same 
artist, bought at the same store, was a picture of 
Joan of Arc. Each girl at the opening of her eyes 
every morning, looked upon a picture; one saw 
Marie Antoinette, and the other saw Joan of Arc. 
Whenever the first heard of the time of Louis XVI. 
or of the time of Marie Antoinette, she was inter- 
ested. She read of its viciousness and vice and 
foolishness, and her mind followed the line of Marie 
Antoinette. The other heard of Joan of Arc, of her 
purity and nobility and unselfishness, and whenever 
she saw a statue of Joan of Arc or heard any ac- 
count of her, she thought of that picture she had 
seen. She loved to read anything about Joan's 

70 



The Possibility of Being Like Our Heroes 

devoted life. The one who looked upon the picture 
of Joan of Arc has become one of America's bene- 
factors — a life so sweet and pure that the memory of 
her name carries with it a halo and a blessing. The 
other became one of the worst of characters — so bad 
that we do not mention it at all. Constant looking 
at two pictures and dwelling on the lives back of the 
pictures had led two persons to their destiny, the 
one upward and the other downward. 

It is not a new fact in the study of humanity that 
what we long gaze at admiringly and approvingly 
affects our hearts and lives. Men found it out thou- 
sands of years ago. Moses once went up into a 
mountain summit and had a peculiar fellowship with 
the God of Light. For days he dwelt in that 
bright presence. The effect was that when he came 
down again from the mountain he carried with him 
that which he had seen, and behold, the face of 
Moses did shine with the reflected light of God. So 
to Paul it was one of the beliefs that are indisput- 
able, that constant beholding of a character by a 
person, as a mirror beholds an object that it may 
reflect it, causes that person to be changed into 
likeness to that character. This fact was to him 
an indication of what it is possible for a person to 
become in character, and an indication of the means 

71 



Possibilities 

whereby a person can be changed into the very im- 
age or likeness of Christ from glory to glory. 

Whether the change which was claimed to have 
taken place in the body of St. Francis of Assisi was 
true, or not, can never be settled. The claim made 
for this simple hearted man who mingled lovingly 
with birds and who sought the spiritual good of his 
fellows, was this : That he had gazed so long and so 
adoringly at the cross with Christ outstretched 
thereon as the wounded sacrifice for man, that the 
wounds of Christ had reproduced themselves upon 
his own body, so that these " stigmata," made by 
the spear and the nails, appeared upon himself. 
The Franciscans to this day hold that marks of dis- 
coloration did come to their great master's body in 
hands and feet, and that blood did exude from his 
side. 

But be this story as it may, the very claim set up 
by it is instructive. St, Francis would never have 
conceived of such a view as this, nor would his fol- 
lowers have dared to press it as they have, unless 
there was a philosophy of life, an idea beneath it, 
which gave it a foundation. That idea is, and all 
who study mankind are aware of its truthfulness, 
that he who deliberately fixes his gaze on an object 
is affected by that object. It is not always a pro- 

72 



The Possibility of Being Like Our Heroes 

cess of which the person is conscious. He is influ- 
enced and changed in most cases without his recog- 
nizing what is going on. None the less the process 
goes on, and fixed visual and mental gaze becomes 
a shaping and transforming power over our inmost 
being. 

There are two sides to almost every truth. Truth 
is often said to be a sphere so that it has to be 
turned around in order that all sides may be known. 
It is one side of the truth to say " We see what 
we are," that is, that according to what we are 
within will be the objects upon which we will fas- 
ten our gaze. Foul minds will find foul things in 
life. Pure minds will find pure things. Every 
outward object is seen in the light reflected from 
ourselves. So our inner selves make exterior life. 
A brave heart will see opportunity for effort in a 
crisis, and another will see only reason for dis- 
couragement. Two out of the twelve spies looked 
up at the walled cities of the promised land, and 
said, ' ' Ah, we must take those cities and make them 
strongholds for Israel," and ten others looked up 
at those same walled cities, and said, "Alas, those 
cities will take us and all Israel will be put in 
their dungeons." Yes, much, very much in life 

73 



Possibilities 

does depend upon the spirit of the man who sees. 
Life is one's reflected self. 

But the other side of the truth is just as clear 
and forceful, namely, that what we see makes us. 
Looking at foul things makes us foul. G-ross 
things in literature tend to make us gross. We 
may not intend to take our coloring chameleon- 
like from the objects about us, but if we surrender 
ourselves to the influence of those objects they do 
give our minds and hearts their coloring. 

This is true of all things long pondered, whether 
in material objects or in spiritual characters. A 
man fastens his attention, for instance, on wealth 
and he ' ' becomes conformed in his inner man to the 
image which, through his gaze, has come to be the 
delight of his mind." He more and more thinks 
wealth, dreams wealth, estimates life by wealth, 
fears the loss of wealth, and indeed is himself the 
embodiment of all the ideas of wealth. Just as in 
this day there is what is called "a smoker's heart," 
a condition of heart action which smoking has pro- 
duced, so there comes to be a wealth heart. And so 
with every other exterior object that bears in upon 
the person until it photographs itself on his mind 
and then so possesses that mind (as though the 
photograph had struck roots into every portion of 

74 



The Possibility of Being Like Our Heroes 

his mind), that it controls the mind, virtually is the 
mind. 

Hawthorne has used this profound truth in his 
allegory of " The Great Stone Face ": There was a 
great stone face on the side of a mountain overlook- 
ing the village where a young man lived. The face 
had a local prophecy concerning it, that some day a 
pure and noble man bearing an exact resemblance 
to the great stone face would come to the village and 
be a blessing to everybody. Somehow this prophecy 
sunk into this youth's soul. Others let it touch the 
surface of their thought, but he would go out and 
look up at the stone face and think and think again, 
and at length, upon that face and what it stood for, 
the pure, noble man that was to be a blessing to 
everybody. As he thought he wondered whether he 
should not prepare the way for the coming of the 
good man. So he began to be a toiler for the good 
of his village, he tried to be himself what the great 
stone face would wish him to be, he let helpful 
words drop from his lips and kind looks go from his 
eyes — and, lo, what came about ! As the young 
man grew old and the gray about his face was like 
the mists about the face in the mountains, the 
people began to say, "The prophecy is fulfilled, the 
man resembling the great stone face is with us." 

75 



Possibilities 

So thoroughly had the gaze of hope and the gaze 
of admiration configured his features that he had 
been changed from feature to feature into ' ' The 
Great Stone Face." 

So sure is God that this very process will take 
place in every instance of admiring beholding that 
he has forbidden the use of idols. Every time a 
man bows in adoration before anything that he sees 
he becomes like that thing. Cruel appearing idols 
have always made cruel men out of their wor- 
shipers. Effeminate appearing idols have always 
tended to create effeminate men. Say to a boy, 
' ' This block of stone represents the god of war, of 
bloody, selfish, terrific war," and then bid him make 
that block of stone the synosure of his rapt gaze, 
and you can count upon it that he, too, will have 
war within him in due time stamped upon his soul 
and flowing in his blood. Idols never have been im- 
potent factors in the world's welfare. The creation 
indeed of some men's fancies, they have been the 
creators of other men's fancies. They that make 
them are like unto them, and so is every one who 
worships them. 

Once and once only in the long history of the 
world has God seta visible form before us and given 
us leave to behold and to adore. For thousands of 

7 6 



The Possibility of Being Like Our Heroes 

years all that he ever did was to put men of special 
virtues before the race and call upon them to look 
at those virtues. And he did a wondrous work 
thereby. Men were bidden gaze long at Abraham's 
bravery, and then they became brave. They were 
shown the great-heartedness of Moses and were en- 
couraged to keep the eye long and intently on that 
great-heartedness and then they became great- 
hearted. One by one God introduced men on the 
scene, saying of Pharaoh, Baalim, Manasseh, these 
are not to be admired, but saying of Joshua, Isaiah, 
Daniel in all their manliness and purity, look at 
these — look at them until you, too, have manliness 
and purity in the fibre of your being. 

Ah, it was not a poor way which God used through 
those thousands of years. It was a good way then, 
and it is a good way now. We are helped to mag- 
nanimous characteristics by keeping the eye on 
magnanimous characters. Heroes of our admiration 
make us their reflectors. The stories of the valiant 
souls of other days and of our days must be told, if 
we wish valiant men in these days. Let the fidelity 
of the martyrs be reiterated with genuine admira- 
tion, let the integrity and self-denial of the Eef ormers 
be kept before approving eyes, let the finest words 
of Bunyan and Newton and Livingstone and Lincoln 

77 



Possibilities 

and Phillips Brooks be words that vision shall rest 
on. Then the days of martyr fidelity and Reformer 
courage and heroic beauty will still be here. 

But better than all else was it and is it, when 
God puts before us Jesus Christ and bidding us 
behold him assures us that through this process of 
beholding we shall become like him. Here is the 
art of sanctification. Here is the great possibility 
of human character. No man is necessarily a spirit- 
ual weakling forever. What a man may become in 
likeness to Christ is never limited by his temper- 
ament nor by his surroundings. Paul grasped a 
great idea when he gave this truth universal appli- 
cation and said we " all " may be changed into 
Christ's image. The composition of human minds is 
indeed different. No two persons are alike. But dis- 
similarity in individuality does not prevent repro- 
duction of the same character. Here are several 
materials, wood, stone, gold, silver, bronze. In any 
one of them an image can be made of an object. 
Different as the materials may be they all are capable 
of setting forth the thing imaged. Even if in 
stone, there are many varieties of stone, dark and 
light, soft and hard, granite, marble, porphyry. 
Still each can bear the image that is desired and 
bear it after its own kind. No two persons can 

78 



The Possibility of Being Like Our Heroes 

reproduce Christ in exactly the same way, but they 
can reproduce Christ in the way possible for each 
to reproduce Him. And they can reproduce Him clear- 
er and clearer, until His figure stands out and is recog- 
nized. The image of Christ by the business man will f 
be the business man's image of Christ, so will the 
farmer's, so will the lawyer's, so the mechanic's. 
Christ may not be reproduced in one set of clothes 
and classified with one style of life, as for instance of 
a minister or a mechanic. Christ is capable of being 
reproduced by any one who bears humanity and who 
will make Him his heart life. 

It is told of Dannecher, the German sculptor, that \ 
he occupied eight years upon a marble statue of 
Christ. Previously he had exercised his genius 
upon subjects taken from the Greek and Roman 
mythology, and had won a great reputation. His 
work is often ranked side by side with that of 
Michael Angelo and Canova. When he had labored 
two years upon his statue of Christ he called into 
his studio a little girl and directing her attention to 
the statue asked her, "Who is that?" She 
answered, "A great man." He saw that he had 
not worked out a true image of Christ. So he 
began anew. A few years later he called the 
child into his studio, and repeated his question, 

79 



Possibilities 

"Who is that?" After looking silently at it for 
a while she said in quiet tones, " Suffer little chil- 
dren to come unto me. " He had succeeded, and 
little by little during all those eight years his 
work had been advancing and the vision of Christ 
that he thought had come to him in his solitary 
vigils had been worked out from step to step, from 
glory to glory, until a child could recognize it. 

Dannecher believed then, and ever afterward, that 
he had been inspired by Grod to do this work. And 
it is true that in every human soul the Holy Spirit 
does stand ready to inspire a person to this same 
reproduction of Christ in himself. It is His work 
by suggestion, always. It is His presence that gives 
purpose and secures success. No man can work 
out Christ's image in himself unaided by divine 
help. Whenever a person desires to be like Christ, 
the Holy Spirit has given the desire and is watch- 
ing over the desire. Like Dannecher we are in- 
spired when we wish to be changed into Christ's 
image. 

But here is the thought that now is to be 
prominent, that the means which the Holy Spirit 
asks us to use is "beholding" Christ — and on 
that means He promises a blessing. People who 
admire others do grow to copy them. They hold 

80 



The Possibility of Being Like Our Heroes 

the sentiments of those they admire. They see 
things in their light. They again and again express 
views which have become theirs because once 
they were the views of the other. Drummond 
tells of two fellow students who lived for eight 
years together, and by the end of that time they 
had become so like each other in their methods of 
thinking, in their opinions, in their ways of look- 
ing at things, that they were practically one. 
When a question was asked, it was immaterial to 
which it was put, and when another made a re- 
mark, he knew exactly the impression it would 
make on both. " There was a savor of Jonathan 
about David, and a savor of David about Jona- 
than." Looking at one another to reflect one an- 
other had caused likeness to one another. 

Looking unto Jesus is the great help to being like 
Him. The study of Christ as he resists temptation 
under great stress, makes any man feel that bread 
and power and fame are not so vital as a true ad- 
herence to principle. Such study makes our hearts 
more eager to be brave and spiritual, even in the 
midst of allurements to be material and to find our 
joy in place and pomp. It is keeping the eye upon 
Christ, in all His circumstances, which teaches us 
the manner and the beauty of self-control, which 

81 



Possibilities 

teaches us the strength of patience and the nobil- 
ity of self-denial. 

A man can never do wrong, who, looking ador- 
ingly upon Christ, takes guidance only from Him. 
And here is the marvelous possibility open to us, 
that, if we keep seeing Christ and keep reflecting 
this Christ that we see, there comes to us a habit of 
seeing and reflecting which at last causes us to be 
images of Christ, ourselves. 

Oh, how many times when we have been lulled 
into carelessness, the earnest beholding of Christ 
has aroused our old-time vigor ! How many times 
as we have gazed admiringly on His strong, mag- 
nanimous, unselfish life, we have been rebuked ! 
"Who can possibly cherish bitterness, or discontent, 
and still be trying to reflect Christ ? "Who can be 
self-willed, who cowardly, and still be looking ador- 
ingly on Christ as he struggles and conquers in 
Gethsemane ? 

Truly ours is a marvelous possibility. Nothing 
like it is known on earth. Here is Christ. He is 
the "Altogether Lovely One." And we can be like 
Him ! "Wonder of wonders ! It is possible for every 
one of us, in spirit and in deed, to bear the image of 
the very Son of G-od. 



82 



The Possibility of Livng Aright 
Anywhere. 

" With the temptation a way to escape." 

TT was after I had been in the ministry live years 
that I spent a year in traveling abroad — solely 
for educational benefit. Nothing so surprised and 
dismayed my heart as the laxity of principle which 
I so often saw in persons as they passed from one 
set of surroundings to another. Those who had 
been good and pure in America were not necessarily 
good and pure in France, nor in Turkey. A man 
who had been known as immaculate in New Haven 
was not immaculate in Rome. A woman whose 
religious observances were most careful in Massa- 
chusetts was so absorbed in sight seeing in Germany 
that religious observances had no place in her con- 
duct. It almost seemed as though what we call 
Christian principle was a thing of clothes, to be put 
on like a fur coat when the weather was cold and to 
be taken off like that fur coat when the weather was 
warm. People acted as though their religion was a 
matter of place and occasion, and it was no excep- 

83 



Possibilities 

tional sight to see men and women spend time and 
money as they never would have taught children to 
do when they were still in their American churches 
and in their permanent homes. The Sabbath, the 
church, the ideas of self-control, of unselfishness, of 
godly example were often like the ten tribes of 
Israel; they were " lost " out of the lives of people. 

The question could not but come to my mind re- 
peatedly, what does this mean ? Is not our religion 
a thing of all places and all occasions ? Can it be 
that it is dependent upon surroundings ? May I 
not hope that when I have been laboring to get 
Christian ideas into men's lives for these five years, 
they will carry those ideas everywhere and be dom- 
inated by them ? Or is not Christianity, with its 
high purposes, a life for all men, in any and in 
every circumstance ? 

One Saturday I came to Nazareth. Easter Sun- 
day followed. On that Easter Sunday afternoon, 
after the morning church services, I sat upon the 
hill back of Nazareth and looked out upon the scene 
which Christ often saw as he grew to manhood and 
pondered His mission. The Holy Land was indeed 
in sight. It told of all God had done in Israel, fight- 
ing Israel's battles and delivering Israel out of dis- 
tress, and it made clear that G-od was the God of 

8 4 



The Possibility of Living Aright Anywhere 

that Holy Land. But more was in sight than the 
Holy Land. The Mediterranean was in clear view. 
Vessels were passing up and down it. They were 
coming from Alexandria and going to Corinth. 
They were coming, too, from Rome and going to 
Antioch. And this was the very scene Christ often 
saw ! So he knew about Alexandria and all its spe- 
cial evils, and about Corinth and all its vice, and 
about Rome and its temptations and about Anti- 
och and its seductions. Never was it easier to do 
wrong than in those wondrously intoxicating cities. 
Never was it so hard to keep clean and beautiful as 
in the civilization around that luxurious Mediterra- 
nean. And still Christ expected men and women 
to go out into all these cities and into all these 
seductions and to be firm Christians ! And this was 
no assumed expectation, no desperate bravado; it 
was so real, so complete an expectation that he 
talked of men going everywhere, exposed to every 
kind of temptation, and continuing faithful, as 
though no other idea was to be entertained. Christ 
evidently believed that a man could be a Chris- 
tian anywhere. Christianity was to conquer cir- 
cumstance, not to be conquered by circumstance. 
Yes, Christ knew the world, knew every phase of 
human nature and every phase of temptation, and 

85 



Possibilities 

still he held that a man could and should carry his 
Christianity triumphantly everywhere. 

The vision which came to my heart on that hill- 
top at Nazareth was like the vision granted John at 
Patmos, an assurance of the divinity, universality 
and success of Christianity. 

Lately a young man who has been active in Chris- 
tian work and who has borne a spotless and an 
earnest life, on the eve of departure for Berlin, where 
he is to spend some years in the study of music, 
came to me, and asked whether I thought that 
he could sustain his Christian zeal and Christian 
conduct in Berlin. Sustain them in Berlin ! He 
can sustain them anywhere upon the face of the 
earth. It is not true, nor has it ever been true, nor 
will it ever be true, that a human soul can be over- 
come of evil unless it is willing to be, that is, unless 
it acquiesces in evil, which is, virtually, choosing 
evil. Young men have gone from the quietest, and 
if one pleases to use such a title, the "narrowest" 
homes of America, and they have come nearer to 
God in Berlin than anywhere else, and when they 
have returned to America they were braver, man- 
lier, sweeter souls than when they went away. 
Place does have something to do with our religious 
life. There are circumstances in which we are more 

S6 



The Possibility of Living Aright Anywhere 

exposed to evil than in other circumstances. But 
everything depends upon whether we let circum- 
stances use us or we use them. Turn a sharp sword 
against yourself and you suffer; turn it against the 
enemy and he suffers. Circumstances need never 
overpower a man. They are to be overpowered by 
us. 

Ah, but think, some one says, of the many 
students who have gone to Germany to study and 
have come back despiritualized. The churches that 
knew their service know it no more. Think of the 
many, many people who have gone into new sur- 
roundings and they were stripped of their zeal, and 
faithfulness, and, perchance, of their goodness. 
And was there not a Lot who dwelt over by Sodom, 
and did not his life and the life of his whole family 
grow faint hearted and even careless ? Instances 
upon instances arise. We know them by the hun- 
dreds. Men went to South America to engage in 
trade and they never have cared for Christianity 
since. They went to India to make a visit, and 
they lost their religion. Women stepped into cir- 
cles of society to which they were unaccustomed, 
and, like Lot's wife, they have always had their faces 
turned away from the Promised Land since. Boys 
go off to school and college, and they never are the 

87 



Possibilities 

same afterward. They are careless or unbelieving 
or low. And youth by the scores pour into cities 
and their early piety disappears as dew before the 
sun, and fathers and mothers know, as the years 
pass, that their sons have lost the elements of soul- 
life that to them were beyond value. And then 
goes up the cry: It was the city, the college, the 
school, the business that ruined the life. The tempt- 
ations were too great. 

No, they were not too great. They never can be 
too great. The fault is not in the place, but in the 
person. Joseph is far away from home in a most 
luxurious and debased court, where acquiescence in 
evil seems to open the only course to success, but 
he remains as pure as the day his mother last kissed 
him. Daniel is in the very center of political influ- 
ences tending to the lowering of his religious 
standards, but he is just the same praying man at 
the ending as at the beginning. Let Shadrach, 
Meshach and Abednego be sent away to school and 
college in wicked Babylon and let everybody around 
them do wrong if you please, but they will hold fast 
to their ideas of integrity and they can no more be 
moved than Gibraltar can be uprooted by a dash of 
spray. Paul enters Athens, and lo, the whole city 
is given over to idolatry and if he does aught else 

88 



The Possibility of Living Aright Anywhere 

than acknowledge idols, the bulk of the people will 
mock at him. But we might as well think of the 
sun being turned back in its course as of Paul put- 
ting garlands upon the beautiful statues around 
him, though handsome men and beautiful women 
are all doing so. 

These are not solitary instances of ability to meet 
temptation. The history of humanity is full of 
them. The best people that the world has ever 
known have been those who have stood uninjured 
in trying circumstances. The wickedest cities, the 
wickedest schools, the wickedest courts have had 
their moral heroes. These heroes have shown what 
people could be if they wished to be. Whitfield 
grew up a tavern boy. The Wesleys came to the 
front when earnestness was dead at the intellectual 
centers of England. So true is it that good can 
exist in the most trying circumstances, that man- 
kind has a saying that the place to find an honest 
man is not where honesty has been easy, but where 
it has been difficult. 

It is one of the persistent and pernicious ideas of 
every generation, and of many, many people in that 
generation, that possibly circumstances of evil may 
be too much for a person! Once let a parent give 
that idea to his child (and the child receive it), and 

8 9 



Possibilities 

the child's future is hopeless. For a person to take 
that idea into his heart is to meet life with the 
expectation of defeat. That idea is a lie. Christ 
does not authorize it. The Scriptures do not exem- 
plify it. History does not illustrate it. The very 
opposite is the truth. "You can kill my body," 
many and many a man has said, "but you can not 
kill me." "You can browbeat me and curse me, ridi- 
cule me and strike me, but I will not do what you 
ask of me," has been heard hundreds of times in 
offices, in lodgings and in castle dungeons. Calmly 
but firmly youth, both in woman and man, has said 
"no," when evil deeds were being forced upon 
them, and that "no," said so quietly, was a final- 
ity. All the powers of persuasion or of threat could 
not alter it an iota. The very gates of death stood 
baffled before it. 

What I say is Scripture and is fact, no people and 
no circumstances can ruin a soul. Wicked, wretched 
people may force liquor down an unwilling man's 
throat and may do other cruelly wrong deeds to men 
and women, but the persons temporarily injured need 
never submit to the moral evil of the injury — unless 
they please. 

Here is the liberty and the opportunity of us all. 
Proclaim it to every youth growing up, every child 

90 



The Possibility of Living Aright Anywhere 

leaving home, every man of business and every 
woman of society: You can make yourself, circum- 
stances need not make you. If you are conquered 
by circumstances of evil it is because you lie down 
before them, not stand up before them and fight 
them. Evil and you are face to face. Evil will 
surely down you unless you down evil. 

But I hear some one ask, as once a young man 
did ask of me, ' ' Can any man resist his supreme tempt- 
ation? " Undoubtedly to each man in the course of 
his life there comes some supreme hour or period 
when temptation assails him as never before. Christ 
had temptations always but he had one experience 
with temptation that was superlatively his tempt- 
ation. He stood his temptation and we may stand 
ours. Rarely does a soul know at the time that this 
is the hour of its supreme temptation. The tempt- 
ation may be to make the slightest deviation from 
right, and so get started in a wrong course. It is 
not always, nor usually, to do some heinous evil, but 
some little evil that will be a mere relaxation of 
virtue, a mere unsettling of the good, that perchance 
will eventuate in a larger evil. Whether we shall 
let the camel put his nose within the door may be 
the supreme question our lives will have to decide. 

Yes, there is a supreme temptation, a temptation 

91 



Possibilities 

which has in it the making or the marring of our 
lives. It may come in youth and it may come in 
manhood and it may come in age. It is the most 
ignorant folly to forget that every period of life has 
its own temptations, and that temptations of age 
may be as hurtful as those of youth, of the heart as 
hurtful as those of the body. What an hour that 
was in Cranmer's life when he had to choose be- 
tween seeming loss of all things and God's will ! 
What an hour in the life of Polycarp when it was 
Christ and the fire, or selfishness and safety. 

But come when and come how the supreme tempt- 
ation may come, we need not be overpowered by it. 
No temptation has ever yet come to any one that is 
not " common to man"; that is, is not a part of or- 
dinary human life. There are no such things as 
irresistible temptations. Other people have re- 
sisted what may come to us, and we can resist. 
God will not agree to take away temptation. The 
testing part of temptation is an element of his in- 
finitely wise and good dealing with us. We should 
be a sorry set of people if we did not have the 
discipline of tests. Nobody would want us in any 
position of trust, untested. The man or woman who 
has not had and overcome temptation would better 
never be asked to help make a home. The bank that 
92 



The Possibility of Living Aright Anywhere 

takes a man for its cashier who has • not been tested 
for capacity and integrity is unworthy of confidence. 
Where in all the world is there a strong athletic 
team that does not try its men first and then accept 
them afterward ? The test in Eden and the test 
now is not an evil in itself. It is a good. God or- 
dains it. Human life would be weak and flabby 
without it. What would skill and integrity and 
manhood be were it not for temptation? It is man's 
great helper toward robustness. We go away from 
home, we have our losses in business, we mingle in 
new circumstances, we are surrounded by wicked 
people, and all these features of life are our oppor- 
tunity for developing our strength. 

But though God does not take away temptation 
he does enable us to escape its power. This does 
not mean that we necessarily are to get away from 
it, but to escape its power. This is always so. 
Never yet in the history of the human race has it 
been otherwise. I say this on the li faithfulness of 
God." He bids us judge his trustworthiness, on this 
record. He provides with the temptation some way 
to escape its power. A man can escape the evil of 
temptation if he will. 

Why then, you ask, do so many fall into its power? 
My answer is, first, because they do not believe 

93 



Possibilities 

God. They are theoretical and practical atheists. 
They think, and they act upon their thinking, that 
God has not told the truth when he has said that 
every man may escape the power of temptation. 
Their whole view of life is moulded by the idea that 
they are here to suffer many a defeat from tempta- 
tion. So they are not resolute, undaunted. They 
do not grow up with set purpose to be immovable. 
They feel that they are justified in being weak in 
trying hours, in being discouraged when attacked 
by difficulties, in hanging their heads like bulrushes 
when storm sweeps over them. Whoever knew an 
army that was looking for defeat, to succeed? But 
when an army knows that the possibility, aye, and 
the probability, aye, and still more, the surety of 
success will be theirs if they fight desperately, what 
fighting they do! 

Then, secondly, this is true: they do not study the 
Bible. People are allowed to stand in the place of 
temptation ignorant of their situation. Every bo}^ 
and girl should know what life is exactly as they are 
to meet it. No expurgated edition of the Bible for 
me! Every one of its stories is needed, and needed 
just as it is told. They tell of all kinds of wrong- 
life — and they tell of them plainly. It is much help 
to youth when we say to them, ' ' You will be sur- 

94 



The Possibility of Living Aright Anywhere 

rounded by dangers on every hand. Therefore, be 
careful. Live guardedly. You must remember 
Christ's own words, 'Beloved, I send you forth as 
sheep in the midst of wolves.'" There is sugges- 
tion, wondrous suggestion of the dangers to which 
we are exposed, in such words. 

But even more than these general warnings are 
needed. Christ specified the particular dangers of 
his time, to those whom he sent forth. So should 
people now have specific dangers mentioned to them. 
Every child should have his father or his mother sit 
down beside him and tell the meaning of all parts 
of the book of the Proverbs. Let the boy know the 
evil of strong drink, let him be told of the wretched 
harm of all uncleanness of thought, vision and 
deed, tell him hoio evil will approach him, let him 
have his eye open for the disguises of wrong, as 
well as for the wrong itself. There is no need of a 
girl moving out into life the plaything of any per- 
suasive worldling that may meet her. In times of 
war — and war it is — I want to know not alone that 
there is an enemy, but what the enemy's methods 
are, where he conceals himself, who are his spies 
and his emissaries, what he will try to do to weaken 
me. Give the information to youth and others 
about particular dangers — and then if they will be 

95 



Possibilities 

blind or will yield, the evil is their own, their own 
distinct choice. 

This also is true as a reason why people go down 
before wrong: they do not meet life as knight-er- 
rants of Christianity. They do not stand before 
life intending to conquer. Evil is conquered only 
by fighting it, and by fighting it through putting 
good in its place. To get the better of temptation 
a heart has to be a missionary, overcoming evil 
w T ith good. Merely to resist evil is eventually to be 
overcome by evil. Lot's family were not mission- 
aries to Sodom, and behold, what happened ! No 
man can continue to be good unless he lives, where- 
ever he may be, to make life better. It is war to 
the death on both sides. We are to force the fight. 
To be good and not do good is to be conquered by 
evil. 

Yes, we can succeed. Christ succeeded, and so 
can we. Christ believed that God was over him 
and with him in His temptation. Christ held fast 
to G-od's word and quoted it and refreshed His heart 
with it. Christ came into the world to conquer it, 
and not to be conquered by it. The thing for us to 
do is, like Him, to avail ourselves of every divine 
help we can get, to put on the whole armor of 
God — hope, faith, watchfulness, prayer and ready 

9 6 



The Possibility of Living Aright Anywhere 

obedience — and then stand our ground and force 
the issue. 

I proclaim to-day the possibility of conquering 
temptation, and making life a success against evil. 
Better, far better to die physically in fidelity to 
the right than to yield to the wrong and live. A 
man can always, always escape temptation. He 
can die, if need be, and be, once and forever, tri- 
umphant. 



97 



The Possibility of Our Time. 

" Redeeming the time." 

/^NE of the scenes which great actresses love to 
put on the stage is the death of Queen Eliza- 
beth. Painters too, love to put it upon the canvas. 
But such is the action of the scene that living beings 
are required if its pathos is to be brought out. 
Here is the queen, who for forty years has ruled a 
strong nation. Power has been hers. She has had 
gallants and warriors in her service. She has had 
great successes by sea and by land. Her name has 
stood for able government and for indomitable will. 
She has gathered about her intellects like Shake- 
speare and courtiers like Sidney. Hers has been a 
brilliant reign. But at last health fails, her cour- 
age falters, and she must die. Her attendants are 
with her. Nobles and beautiful women await her 
word for their services. Gold and silk and luxurious 
drapery are present. Her will asserts itself and she 
seems to hold death back by her very resolution. 
But she can not live. Her mighty name, her wise 
physicians, her daring warriors are impotent. There 

9 8 



The Possibility of Our Time 

she lies in the midst of as brilliant a gathering of 
men and women as the world can find — and still, 
she must die. Her restless, dominating will has 
met its victor. 

Whether in that dying- scene Queen Elizabeth did 
cry out — "Millions of money for an inch of time" — 
I do not know. So the tradition tells us. And 
there are many, of whom I am one, who never think 
of Queen Elizabeth without associating with her the 
thought of the value of time and never think of the 
value of time without associating with it the death 
scene of Queen Elizabeth. Here was the greatest 
sovereign of earth, whose life had been unceasingly 
busy and magnificently successful, dying in cir- 
cumstances of unlimited wealth and power, and still 
she was craving "an inch of time." 

What may be done with an inch of time, some 
persons have shown. It is said that " no excuse for 
neglect of duty drops oftener from men's lips than 
the want of time." We think ourselves very busy 
in the many, almost countless, things which come to 
us to do, and so perhaps we are. We think our- 
selves too busy in what we call ( < the bread and but- 
ter " things of life — the things that are essential to 
our study or sport, our domestic care or business, 
our farm, our merchandise, our social duties — to 

99 



Possibilities 

have time tor personal helpfulness to others, and for 
direct fellowship with God. The statement is often 
heard, "I could not crowd another thing into my 
life than is now there; " and when deeds of Christian 
service are asked for, and requests come for work in 
special lines of church attendance, Sunday school 
teaching, district visiting, counseling for benevo- 
lent institutions, the answer is that time is so fully 
occupied that not a moment can be found for these 
things. 

It is true that the whole world of mankind thinks 
itself busy. This idea has to be reckoned with in 
speaking to others about any good work desired of 
them, and has to be reckoned with just as carefully 
in discussing with ourselves whether we shall be 
active in helpful endeavor. People are very sensi- 
tive on this subject, all people are. Every person 
who is an employee feels that the demands on his time 
are very many. Clerks everywhere will say this. 
So will all laborers, all household servants. Em- 
ployers will say the same. The men that talk the 
most about ' ' the rush of life " are those who are 
their own masters, the men who are over others and 
who map out work for others. " How busy life is! " 
women say, who may have four or five helpers to do 
their bidding. Persons in factories, or in harvest 

100 



The Possibility of Our Time 

fields, or in tailoring shops, think, "Oh, if I hud as 
much time at my disposal as college youths or the 
men and women who live in large houses ! " while the 
very ones whom they have in mind think themselves 
almost out of breath in trying to keep up with what 
they have to do. 

Yes, it is a subject one has to present carefully, 
even to one's own self, when the consideration is 
about "an inch of time." 

It would be interesting to know the process of 
thought which passed through the minds of the 
priest and of the Levite as they came upon the needy 
man when they were going down from Jerusalem to 
Jericho. Did the priest say as he saw him: "The 
man certainly ought to have help. He is in a bad 
way. But I am in a great hurry. I cannot stop to 
look out for him. I must get to Jericho and back so 
quickly that I have no time for doing anything 
here." Did the Levite say as he saw him: "Poor 
fellow, he has had a hard time. He ought to be 
helped. But the sun is going down and it is impos- 
sible for me to tarry. Should I do anything for him, 
it will take me an hour or two at least." 

We do not know what they thought or said, but 
we can imagine. For when the Samaritan came 
along it did take his time to bind up the man's 

IOI 



Possibilities 

wounds, pour in oil and wine, set him on his beast 
and bring him to the inn. Perhaps he was the busi- 
est man of the three, for it would seem as though 
the priest and Levite were sauntering along the 
road inasmuch as they were going over it "by 
chance," while the Samaritan had a definite and dis- 
tinct object in view, inasmuch as it is written of 
him "as he journeyed." Probably it made a heav- 
ier demand on his time and interfered more with his 
plans than a similar act would have done in the case 
of the priest or of the Levite. However, he did it. 
He worked it in somehow. He got time for keeping 
himself in actual touch with an individual case of 
need. He got time for cultivating the brotherly 
spirit. He got time for putting himself into sym- 
pathy with the purpose of God and for winning the 
plaudit of " well done " from the very lips of the 
Saviour. It was out of the line of his business, out 
of the line of all his plans for his travel, but he got 
time to do it. Others had more time than he and 
still they had less time. He had no time and still 
he had all the time that was needed. 

There are particular scenes in history that are 
pleasant to recall in this connection. One is of a 
boy named Hugh Miller, born at Cromarty, in Scot- 
land, and losing his father when he was five years 

102 



The Possibility of Our Time 

old. What was to become of him? His relatives were 
poor; they could do nothing for him but find him a 
home and send him to the village school for a while. 
Then he must do for himself. So we see him as a 
boy of sixteen breaking stone by the roadside for 
the roadbed. Then later we see him going to the 
red sandstone quarry as a laborer, and still later 
we see him building walls as a stone mason. But 
what is so interesting in him? This: that busy as 
that boy was from early morning to late at night, 
with hard, manual, exhausting labor, he made time 
after his hours of work to read every good book he 
could lay his hands upon, and then all day long he 
pondered what he had read, and pondered most of 
all what he had read concerning God and concerning 
God's revelation of himself in red sandstone and in 
other stones. He worked so well that he was always 
employed; he put conscience into road making and 
wall building; he never skimped. 

Others when they had fulfilled their task, had not 
time for anything but to eat, sleep and talk desul- 
torily. He published a volume named : ' ' Poems 
Written in the Leisure Hours of a Journeyman 
Mason." He studied fossils, he communed with 
God during all the hours his hammer was going up 
and down, he worked out a strong, vigorous, help- 

103 



Possibilities 

ful character, and when the time came in Scotland's 
history that some layman should plead for her eccle- 
siastical freedom from state domination, Hugh Mil- 
ler was ready with a word for her defense, though 
until he was thirty-three years old he was stone 
mason, and stone mason only. What made him was 
the use to which he put his inch of time. No man 
in all his day was working longer and working 
harder at his assigned labor, but he made spare 
time and he got value out of it. 

Then there is this scene which is pleasant: It 
is in a house in Epworth, England. It is a min- 
ister's home. The stipend is very small, three or 
four hundred dollars a year. The family is very 
large. Child after child is born into it. If ever a 
woman's hands were full, the hands of Susannah 
Wesley were. Where were the clothes to come from 
for her many children? How was the household life to 
be ordered so that there should be bread enough 
day after day? The whole neighborhood was poor. 
Parish work too, demanded time and attention. It 
might seem as though not a minute could be left 
to that woman, cultured and thoughtful as she was, 
for the training of her children and for any special 
influence in their behalf. But she made time. 
Over sewing, knitting, cooking, she taught her 

104 



The Possibility of Our Time 

children. From her they learned to spell and read, 
at five years of age. From her they received the 
Bible, its history and its principles. From her 
they heard the story of the great and good of all 
ages, and from her they were taught that spiritual 
nearness to God is the need and the possibility of 
every human heart. A busier woman can scarcely 
be imagined than a woman who has the thousand 
details of a large family in a narrow home where 
every article of food and clothing has to be planned 
for. But with all her maternal duties, she made 
time for John and Charles Wesley and all their 
brothers and sisters to receive from her the instruc- 
tion whereby through them blessings came to all 
the world. 

No life is too busy, nor can be too busy to be 
good. The right employment of minutes may give 
character to all the remainder of one's time. Pur- 
poses and wishes can be made in instants. Such 
purposes and wishes may shape the whole life. 
What makes a person's life is its spirit. Given the 
right spirit and no one on earth can be so occupied 
but that he will have time and will make time 
for the noblest purposes and deeds. There is 
not one word in the Bible about honest employment 
or necessary care interfering with our good. Rather 

105 



Possibilities 

is there word upon word that every calling, however 
active and engrossing, may be and should be a 
means of grace. It is the distinct charge of Paul, 
in order to guard against the idea that a man 
to be good should change his business and get 
into one that is easier for Christian living, that 
every man abide in the work where he is and 
in that work see to it that he grows stronger 
and better. No slave ever lived whose time was so 
completely his master's but that he could find time 
to draw near to God and be in earnest. There 
were men in the days of the persecutors who were 
put in the galleys of the Mediterranean and were 
chained to their seats. Over them stood the mas- 
ter who beat them that they might row harder. 
Sometimes these men pulled so long, so incessantly 
that scarce any cruelty can be named that was more 
exhausting than that of the galley slave. Theirs 
was a horrible life. They were cursed, they were 
struck, they were driven to their tasks. But boat 
after boat among those galleys had its Christian 
men who must not open their lips to mention 
Christ's name in a master's hearing lest they die, 
but who lived kindly in their hearts, forgivingly to 
their persecutors, whispering under their breath to 
their fellow sufferers words of comfort and of cheer. 
1 06 



The Possibility of Our Time 

And all because they found time between blows and 
in the midst of blows to think of God and ask God's 
help and grace. 

Sometimes I think of this matter in this way: It 
is possible to take a large box and fill it with cannon 
balls. They will be six or eight inches in diameter. 
The box may be packed until not another ball can 
be put into it. No reshaping of the cannon balls can 
give space for even one more ball. The box is full, 
absolutely full of cannon balls. Then when this has 
been done, we can go to the box and pour pail after 
pail, pail after pail of water into this box. The box 
was full, and still there was room for the water. 
There the water is, flowing in and around and cov- 
ering all. It has displaced nothing. There was 
room for it. So in our human life, crowded full as 
it may be with work and care and study, there is 
always room, always time for this inflowing and in- 
dwelling of a spiritual fulness which may supplant 
nothing but may give environment and tone to 
everything. 

God never meant, and no man should ever allow 
to himself, that there is not time enough in his ex- 
istence to be holy. Every man has more time than 
he uses wisely. No Samuel ever went away from 
home to school who had so much to do in studying 

107 



Possibilities 

and in working that he could not live near God. No 
Joshua had so many worries as a military com- 
mander that he could not go alone and talk with 
God. It was when cares of state were multitud- 
inous beyond numbering, when every minute 
of Abraham Lincoln's days and nights was demanded 
by the anxieties of the war and its terrible reverses, 
that he made time to pray. Caesar would not suffer 
any campaign, however exacting, to deprive him of 
minutes when he would write within his tent his 
Commentaries. Stonewall Jackson could not be so 
absorbed in leading troops that were poor and weak 
but that he thought often of his Maker and of the 
little churches and Sunday schools of his Maker's 
kingdom. Somehow George Williams found time to 
distribute his day, and others with him found time 
to distribute their days, so that every noon they 
gathered in a London warehouse and spoke to one 
another of human needs, and the Young Men's 
Christian Association started. Carey was a man 
with family, needing every penny he could get for 
his family's support, but he found time, while cob- 
bling away over worn and ragged shoes, to think of 
the heathen, to learn their needs, to fill his heart 
with love for an untaught world, and then to go to 
1 08 



The Possibility of Our Time 

church on Sunday and arouse the world to the recog- 
nition of his views. 

Time ! The trouble is not that we do not have 
time enough to live near God and help the world. 
It is amazing how much time we have! Every em- 
ployee has it. How much time he has for mis- 
chievous things ! How many minutes to give to 
matters of secondary importance ! Evening after 
evening goes to waste or to something worse than 
waste. Mechanics have abundance of time, so has 
even the worker in the sweat-shop. I knew a life 
which went to work every morning at six o'clock, 
and worked every day from the fourteenth year 
until the twenty-first until seven in the even- 
ing, and then at nine o'clock went to a store, 
opened it, hunted through it, closed it again, 
and at half past nine returned the key to 
the employer. Not one cent of wages did this 
apprentice receive during those seven years. A 
few times did one and another give him a dime or a 
quarter. What should he do with those gifts? Use 
them for the late theater, or what people would call 
a relaxation, an amusement? He guarded his spare 
hours, he got sleep and strength in them, and he 
got books for them and good companionship for 
them, and church services for them, and Sunday 
109 



Possibilities 

school work for them, and when he was twenty-one 
and was free from his apprenticeship, from what we 
might to-day call his ''slavery," he was ready for 
life, because he had rightly used an inch of time. 
He had not money, but he had energy and learning 
and a well cultivated Christian character. 

Time ! Yes, everybody has it. The rich have it 
and the poor have it. Let us cease forever saying 
that we have not time for God's will, God's wor- 
ship, God's work. There is a terrible danger that 
we prate over our busy lives, that we coddle our- 
selves, and get others, our families perhaps, to 
coddle us with sympathy because we are so busy. 
Say that we are busy, very, very busy with study, 
with work, with thought, let no one relax his in- 
tention to find time to dwell in the secret place 
of the Most High. We can pray over our studies; 
we can carry God's glory into our business; we can 
think in dependence upon God's wisdom; and then 
we can cast care upon him. The best thing the 
busiest man can do is to go to the place of de- 
votion. The man who labors six days out of seven, 
from seven in the morning until six in the evening, 
would better be in a church on Sunday than any- 
where else. When Christ's day was the busiest he 
went up in the evening into the mountain for a 

I IO 



The Possibility of Our Time 

quiet season of prayer. There and thus he got his 
refreshment of heart for the next day's labor. 
Clubs, social organizations, labor unions, lecture 
courses are good, but they must never keep a 
man from finding time to commune with God and 
extend the helping hand to some particular souls. 
Amusements, recreations, relaxations serve their 
mission only when they help us to find larger time 
for life's truest work. 

An inch of time ! It is worth millions. That 
inch used every day by Sir John Lubbock outside of 
banking hours made him an authority in pre-his- 
toric studies. That inch used by Dr. Rush as he 
was driving about from house to house visiting his 
patients made him an author. That inch used by Elihu 
Burritt, the blacksmith, made him a linguist, able to 
talk in twenty languages. An inch of time ! If you 
use it aright you can always find time for speakin g 
to God every morning before you speak to any one 
else, always time for reading God's word before you 
read the word of any one else, always time to study 
the Bible, always time to be at church, always time 
to think about the poor and needy, always time to go 
to the man who is wounded and help him. 

An inch of time ! Yes, the dying thief had but 
one inch of time, and he used it to an eternal 

1 1 1 



Possibilities 

blessedness. We, too, may use it to our Saviour's 
delight and comfort, and to our own ceaseless and 
blessed good. 



I 12 



The Possibility of a New and 
Blessed Life. 

" He which persecuted now preacheth. " 

HPHE best thing in this world is a good man. The 
greatest thing in this world is a great good 
man. The most blessed thing in this world is a 
blessed good man. 

In Daniel Webster's day there was an old man 
named John Colby who had lived wickedly. The 
whole neighborhood knew him, and it was every- 
body's opinion that his wickedness was so inwrought 
into all the elements of his being that his wicked- 
ness and himself were inseparable, that they would 
lie down in the grave together. Year followed year 
and no change appeared in the man, save that his 
wickedness seemed to become more and more his 
very being. The idea that he would ever be differ- 
ent in character from what he was did not even 
suggest itself to the minds of those who knew him. 
He was one of the men who are said to be beyond 
the possibility of goodness. But contrary to what 
everybody expected, there came a change to John 

113 



Possibilities 

Colby. One day G-od's will laid hold of him. He 
realized as he never had before what God wished of 
him, and what a miserable failure he had made of 
himself up to that hour. He was glad to believe 
that God would forgive him if he would repent of 
his wickedness, and that God would help him in the 
effort to be a good man. Then and there he 
renounced his wickedness, renounced what people 
had said was his very character, and putting aside 
his old-time self with its wrong and harm he put on 
a new self of purity and helpfulness. The change 
that appeared in John Colby surprised every one. 
But it lasted, it grew greater in its power and 
extent over him, it made a strong, worthy man 
of him. So it was that Daniel Webster used to say 
that ' l if any one wished to know what the gospel 
could do for a man let him look at John Colby." 

The first thing that a human being should recog- 
nize about himself is that his character is his dis- 
tinguishing feature. It is not the amount of money, 
the amount of power, the amount of brains that a 
man has that is his distinguishing feature, but his 
character. Whatever fellow men may temporarily 
say or do to the contrary, this is a fact: that what 
separates him from others and gives him his individu- 
ality is his goodness or lack of goodness, according 

114 



The Possibility of a New and Blessed Life 

to its degree. Money, power and brains have their 
place, and they do exert an influence in temporarily 
deciding a man's position and recognition. But the 
standard of the ages, by which any one and every 
one is tried, is character; and in God's sight, which 
is the eternal and determining sight, men are what 
they are in their wishes and purposes. 

It is not then too much to say that the supreme 
ambition of a person's life should be to secure a 
worthy character. Everything else, however im- 
portant, is merely subsidiary. Beauty of person, bril- 
liancy of achievement, acuteness of intellect, sway 
of authority are secondary, while goodness is prim- 
ary. 

Sometimes people realize this from childhood. 
"Wise parents so inculcate it that the idea of it gets 
into girls and boys in their very youth, and they 
grow up to seek first the things which are known to 
be approved by the highest authority on character, 
God Himself. But sometimes people do not realize 
this until they have grown out of what is called the 
formative period of life and they are already men 
and women with set tendencies of thought and 
feeling. If the tendencies are toward the selfish 
and the wrong, if these men and women have be- 
come misers, or drunkards, or hypocrites, or cynics, 

"5 



Possibilities 

a most important question arises, whether it is pos- 
sible for people with character already made to 
have their character re-made. ' ' Who can bring a 
clean thing out of an unclean ? " was asked in Job's 
day, and the answer then given was, "Not one." 
Was that answer warranted then ? Is it warranted 
now ? Must a man look upon himself hopelessly 
who at twenty, forty, sixty years sees himself a 
wrong doer, and so say, "I can not be different?" 
Must the friends of those who are wrong doers say 
within their own hearts, ' ' These people have crys- 
tallized their character and they can not be different 
from what they are ? " 

Next to our recognition of the fact that character 
is our distinguishing feature we need to bear in mind, 
that we have determining wills. It is those wills 
that indicate our character as nothing else does. 
Every time we make a choice we express our will. 
Choices evidence our character. When we know 
what we or others choose, we know what we and 
they are. 

So long as we have determining wills, it will never 
do to compare us to a tree and say, as the tree that 
has grown into its present shape must always re- 
main as it is, so men who have grown into present 
character must always remain as they are. We are 

116 



The Possibility of a New and Blessed Life 

not trees. No, the tree can not turn itself around 
and look eastward when it has been looking west- 
ward. Nor can the upas tree that brought forth 
poison bring forth healthful food. The wild apple 
tree can not change itself into the sweet apple tree. 
But what trees can not do, men can do, because they 
are an order of creation possessing determining- 
wills. Men can change their place as trees can not, 
and they can change the whole sap of their life so 
that the sap of inward sentiments shall be different 
from what it has been and the fruits of outward 
deeds shall be different too. 

Warning after warning is given in Scripture as to 
the tendency with our wills to move in the grooves 
in which they have already moved many times. As 
years go on character does grow more and more 
fixed, because the will acts lazily and keeps in the old 
time track. Accordingly the Bible is always crying 
aloud to us to look well lest our wills get into habits 
of action that make us continually bad, and so the 
iron chains of habit hold us prisoners of the bad. But 
never will it allow that any man cannot, if he will, 
break from evil habit and begin a new and different 
life. It is a book of hope, because it is a book of 
possibility for character. It will not look on any 
man as hopeless for good. It calls to every kind of 

H7 



Possibilities 

case of wrong, however great the degree of wrong, 
and declares that the case is one that can be rem- 
edied. It scorns the idea that man is a tree, it 
rather addresses him as having power to make his 
life whatever he pleases to make it in character — 
and to make it such at the time it addresses him. 

Its pages are filled with illustrations of what it 
means. There are two great classes of wrong 
doers, those whose wrong is of the spirit and those 
whose wrong is of the body, men who sin in 
the mind and men who sin in the flesh. Saul of 
Tarsus was one of the former. Outward life Avith 
him was decorous. He was untouched by drunken- 
ness, theft, ribaldry, or anything that mere human 
law would condemn. But he was proud hearted, 
bitter, relentless against a foe, covetous of power 
and reputation. He was too wise to be indiscreet 
in wickedness, he was too jealous of his reputation 
to do a low, mean act. But he was a terrible man 
to have as an enemy. Whatever the thoughts and 
feelings God might send to him to make him pit- 
iful, he schooled himself to resist them, and he had 
acquired one of those hard, resolute hearts against a 
foe which are more like adamant than like clay. 
For such a man to be humble, gentle, forgiving, 
comparing himself with others to his own disad- 
118 



The Possibility of a New and Blessed Life 

vantage, laying aside his honors that he might 
bend low in the service, the menial service of others, 
is to go through a change than which nothing in 
character seems greater. But he did it. He stopped 
kicking against the pricks of God's stirrings in his 
heart. He gave himself a turn which was as though 
a mountain stood upon its summit, and he, the 
persecutor, became the lover and defender; he, the 
proud Pharisee, became the humble missionary; he, 
the self-satisfied, became in his own estimation as it 
were a very "chief of sinners" — and he lived, 
labored, suffered and died in the gentleness and for- 
bearance of Christian devotion. That was the great- 
est change wrought in any man of his time; but it 
was wrought, and the possibility of the Gospel to 
lay hold of the most difficult case of its kind that 
could be mentioned flashed itself before the observa- 
tion of all the Church. 

Of the other kind of wrongdoers, those of the 
flesh, the people of Galatia were instances. Some 
of them were rough men. They had a bad reputa- 
tion for their vices. They were drunken, fighting 
shepherds. They were unclean. Murders were 
common among them They were ignorant. They 
practiced witchcraft. They bowed to idols. They 
had done these things all their lives. Their fathers 

119 



Possibilities 

had done them before them. What could be made 
of these men? Anything different? Could they be 
made to be gentle, meek, temperate? This Paul 
came among them. He brought a message that 
God did not wish them to live as they had been liv- 
ing. He called upon them to arouse themselves. 
He set forth the beauties of goodness. He begged 
them to let God's Spirit fill and rule their hearts. 
He assured them that a new and Christ-like life was 
possible for them. He instanced the change that 
had come in his own character. And they broke 
from their past (and a terrible wrench it was and a 
hard one to sustain), but they broke from their past, 
and instead of being filled with drink they were 
filled with God's Spirit and instead of hating one 
another they bore one another's burdens. It was a 
new era to the men and women of Galatia when they 
ceased doing the works of the flesh and brought 
forth the fruit of the Spirit, 

There is no denying that these changes involved 
great effort. It is not an easy thing for a life that 
has been traveling down hill all its days to turn and 
climb up hill. It is not easy for a man that has let 
any set of views control him to throw off those 
views and cause another set of views now to rule in 
their place. Is it not the old fable that the stag 



The Possibility of a New and Blessed Life 

and the horse had a fight and the horse appealed to 
man to help him, and man got on his back and once 
on his back the horse could not rid himself of his 
rider ? But Paul and the Galatians did rid them- 
selves of the wrongs that had ridden them. They 
became freemen, tremendous though the effort was 
for them to become such. And it matters not what 
the effort may be that is involved in a change of 
character, it can be made and made successfully. 
No man need be discouraged about himself. That 
which seems impossible can be done. Men have 
said that an ocean steamer can never be built that 
will carry passengers from America to Europe, men 
have said that water can never be made to rise higher 
than its source, but ocean steamers carry hundreds 
of thousands across the Atlantic, and water is sent 
hundreds of feet higher than its source. The laws 
of God in steam have been found and used, and so 
the impossible has become possible. And when the 
laws of God in His grace have been found and used, 
and the divine strength and help have been applied 
to the human heart, and God has been allowed to do 
His work, characters have been transformed and the 
men and women that seemed hopeless for the good 
have become trophies of grace. 

What marvelous things have thus been done! 

121 



Possibilities 

Every kind of man has been changed, and that too 
in every period of life. Here is John, already a 
grown man, but with a hot, fiery temper; and lo, 
that man of seemingly fixed habits of severity 
becomes, under the power of the Gospel, a mar- 
velous expression of complacent love, so that his 
one chief feeling toward men is that of affection; 
and the message which he delights most to tell 
men is the message of love. He has become the 
exact opposite of what he was. I have known men 
who were self-opinionated, and who would not receive 
instruction from anyone turn right about and become 
like little children and ask for instruction in the 
ways of Grod. I have seen men whose hair was 
white lay aside the pride which had made them 
carry themselves as higher and better than their 
fellows, and become humble and helpful. The 
leopard has not changed his spots, nor the Ethiop- 
ian his skin, but the leopard's heart has gone out of 
men and the heart of good has come in, and outward 
demeanor has become as different as though the skin 
of the Ethiopian had changed from black to 
white. 

Some instances of such a change will be interest- 
ing for all time, first, because of the men themselves, 
and second, because we happen to know about them. 

122 



The Possibility of a New and Blessed Life 

There was Augustine of Northern Africa, a well- 
educated boy whose mother was a praying woman. 
He avoided all her counsels and went his own gait 
in ways of thoughtlessness and of wrong. He touched 
all kinds of vice. He knew the finer and coarser 
vices alike. He was a wayward son, a recreant to 
every good influence. He disappointed all his 
friends. They saw a man who was capable of strong 
character giving way to evil associates and to evil 
practices. People lost interest in him. He seemed 
doomed to a wrong life. But his mother Monica 
never gave up hope. When he left Africa and came 
over to Southern Europe that he might the more 
freely follow the bent of his character and so plunge 
into vice, she followed. It seemed as though by this 
move he was cutting away the last tie that restrained 
him from wrong. In new surroundings he found 
the vice he sought. His was a headlong rush into 
evil. But God came to him in His power and 
checked the man as though he stopped Niagara 
when half way over its fall, and Augustine gave up 
every vice, became a dutiful son, a pure, benignant 
man, and confessing his sin renounced his sin and 
devoted his whole after career to the will of God. 

Then there was John Newton. He spoke our 
English language. He grew up in acquaintance 

123 



Possibilities 

with our English Bible. He knew the truth of life 
and knew it well. He had great advantages for be- 
ing good. But he spurned every such advantage. 
He ridiculed goodness. He hardened his heart 
against God' s Spirit, as Pharaoh hardened his heart 
when God sent him helps to believe in Him and 
obey Him, and he persisted in disobedience. He 
became a sailor. He took part in slave stealing. He 
drank and caroused. He misled others, delighting 
in making them the very children of hell. He was 
a sort of vagabond. The eyes of any man looking 
upon him would have seen in him a ruin — an irrepar- 
able ruin. There seemed to be nothing left in him 
that could be made over. There was no foundation 
possible for a new man in him, people said. But 
God's grace came to John Newton, drove the seventy 
devils out of him, cleansed him, revived him, filled 
him with new purposes and ambitions — and John 
Newton became a magnificent specimen of strong 
Christian manhood. Lewd songs gave way to 
praises of God, and oaths to the preaching of God's 
word — and John Newton became a blessing instead 
of a bane, to society and to the world. 

Then there was Colonel Gardiner, a man who had 
all the advantages of wit and gallantry and who 
mingled with the highest social circles of his time. 
124 



The Possibility of a New and Blessed Life 

He knew what brilliant surroundings were because 
he had had part in them. He knew the attractions 
of the gaming table, because he was a skilful and 
acceptable player of gambling games. He was an 
" elegant" sinner. His surroundings were those 
of gilded vice. He went with men and women that 
were well dressed, where jewels, riches and decora- 
tions were seen. Insidiously vice pentrated his 
whole system. It seemed to give him joy. He was 
called the "happy rake." His vice was all the 
more powerful because it was so successful. To 
many thoughtful minds such a man as Colonel Gard- 
iner is the most heartless, hopeless person that can 
be found in a civilized community. But the man 
was reached. God stretched out his hand upon him 
and he shook him out of his vices and he put in him 
a sweet and blessed spirit, and Colonel Gardiner be- 
came a strong, earnest follower of Jesus Christ. 

Where shall such thoughts as these cease? Every 
land, every community can illustrate the possibili- 
ties of God's saving grace. That grace can save a 
man from every sin, no matter what it is, no matter 
how long it has bound a man, no matter how terri- 
ble its power may be. It can save a man from all 
his sins. They may be many, interlaced and com- 
plex, seemingly associated for the simple purpose of 
125 



Possibilities 

making a slave of the man. For nineteen hundred 
years history has been full of such instances. The 
Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save. 
Any man who will let God take him into his direction 
can be saved — saved for time, saved for eternity. As 
one gives himself up to a physician and lets the phy- 
sician prescribe for him, so let a man give himself 
up to God and let God prescribe for him, and all will 
be well. Never has an instance failed. A man never 
surrendered to God's direction who was not made, 
and was not kept, a new creation. Jerry McAuley is 
a river thief in New York City and then a prison con- 
vict, one of the worst of the criminal classes of to-day, 
but he puts himself into God's keeping, and so long 
as he leaves himself there, he continues a good man. 
John B. Gough was a low down drunkard, fit only 
for the gutter, but when he really left himself to 
the guidance of God he became an ornament of so- 
ciety. Africaner is a heathen chief drinking out of 
the skulls of his dead enemies, the terror of his time 
and of his surroundings, but he said to God that 
God should henceforth control his life, and God 
made a gentle, strong, heroic man of him. 

The possibility of a new and blessed life is not 
limited to earth. That possibility extends to hea ven. 
Man may enter upon a career of goodness forever, if 

126 



The Possibility of a New and Blessed Life 

he will. There awaits every one who puts himself 
to school to Jesus Christ as an obedient and faithful 
scholar, unlimited opportunity for acquiring every 
good quality. The virtues he may not secure fully 
in the present, he will secure in the future. Not 
only does a place of blessedness await him, but best 
of all, an inward condition of blessedness will be his 
in that place. He may be a good, strong, noble- 
minded, sweet-tempered, loving hearted man forever, 
and always with fresh delight in his service, in him- 
self, and in his God. 

Human life is crowded with possibilities, but the 
best and highest of them all is that we may He de- 
livered out of all sin and guilt and made like unto 
God Himself in time and for eternity. 



127 



